


Wake the Dead

by LeoOtherLands



Series: Sympathy for the Dead [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Beware they bite, Death Wish, Depression, Drugging, Gen, Interrogation, Medical-nin everywhere, Original Character-centric, POV Original Character, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Torture, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:54:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: How many times can a person die before they break? The death Ibiki will subject Ko to is the fourth he will have endured. He won't suffer a fifth.
Relationships: Morino Ibiki & Original Character(s)
Series: Sympathy for the Dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696153
Comments: 78
Kudos: 47





	1. Ame Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tridraconeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/gifts).



> Dahhhh... I have no explanation and I'm not even going to try to apologize. This is a daydream I'm having an enormous amount of fun on. "shrug" That is about all. Except to say Tridraconeus, yeah... I'm giving this to you. I make it a habit of gifting works to people who inspire certain stories (trust me, I've given people I don't even know shit because they wrote something that set me off...), so, here have this. Why? YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!! And thank you. I really am having fun here. Lol.  
> I went to bed I was thinking about you  
> Ain't the same since I'm living without you  
> All the memories are getting colder  
> All the things that I wanna do over
> 
> I went to bed I was thinking about you  
> And how it felt when I finally found you  
> It's like a movie playing over in my head  
> Don't wanna look 'cause I know how it ends  
> All the words that I said that I wouldn't say  
> All the promises I made that I wouldn't break  
> It's last call, last song, last dance  
> 'Cause I can't get you back, can't get a second chance
> 
> And now, I guess  
> This is as good as it gets
> 
> Don't wake me  
> 'Cause I don't wanna leave this dream  
> Don't wake me
> 
> [Don't Wake Me - Skillet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0PMrV7derw)

The collar was the worst of it and the one real indignity they had subjected me to, thus far, peeling back the high collar of my white, medical- _nin_ uniform to clench the leather around my neck. The band was wide and stiff. They hadn’t cinched it so tight as to choke, but enough so as to leave me on the brink, thinking of it. Every time I swallowed, the band seemed to constrict, like a hand encircling my windpipe, and the leather was beginning to chaff my too soft skin.

Though it frightened me, I understood the purpose of the collar, and so did not outright resent it. Affixed to the front of the thing, just under my chin, was a thin, metal plate, inscribed with bold strokes of _kanji_ characters. A _chakra_ seal, ensuring, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t use any form of _ninjutsu_. Vulgarly, I wondered when sealing the _chakra_ of medical- _nin_ had become common practice. Though not normally soldiers, we were dangerous in our own right. How many _Iryō-nin_ had chosen to slit their own wrists with the Mystical Palm Technique or _chakra_ scalpels rather than risk breaking and divulging information they would rather not speak before those who dealt in the realm of intelligence had determined even such _tame_ creatures as we so often were portrayed could not be allowed the use of our _chakra_? Alternatively, how many medics, at the end of themselves, reduced to the last of their squad, shattered and alone and deranged, had turned their skills on those who questioned them?

_Enough._

The answer was always enough, whether it was few or many. Medical- _nin_ were not the simple, tender-hearted beings we were so much seen as, even if most average _shinobi_ still felt the need to watch over us. Protect us.

No, I understood the necessity of the collar, just as I understood the need to fasten it that extra, undesired notch before locking it in place. The requirement of letting it catch on my fear and induce the sensation of choking. It was the same necessity which called for the manacles.

One set of iron rings locked my ankles to the legs of the chair, and the other connected my wrists to short lengths of chains embedded in the table in front of me. Both table and chair were bolted to the ground, ensuring, even if I had the strength to try, I couldn’t move them. Creating a sense of helplessness. Eliciting twisting anticipation.

Collar and manacles alike primarily served to spike my heart rate and put me on edge.

An unsettled prisoner was more likely to talk than one at his ease. I knew this, but it did not stop me from breathing heavily, until I curtailed the rhythm of my lungs by force and concentrated on the singular in and out of a steady pattern.

The waiting also stopped my overt panic, even while it added to my overall feeling of tension. I was brought in, secured, and left. Left in the moderately lit room with nothing but blank stone walls to look at and the furniture I occupied. Hours dragged on into something more, and weariness began to overtake my fear.

It was uncomfortable to sit, and I hadn’t properly rested in days. But my bonds wouldn't permit me much movement. I couldn’t even reach my face with my hands, while sitting up. All I could do was lean forward over the table and bury my head in my arms. A thing which put pressure on my immobile feet. Yet, it was a slim comfort to put my head down and close my eyes. Feeling tears prick hot behind my closed lids, I let out a stuttering breath and reached for another comfort.

Song.

The words dropped off my lips one by one without my even having to call for them. They were eternally familiar, like the beating of my heart, and as old as memory. The song sounded hollow in the room and my voice was quaking, but it didn’t matter. The singing mattered. I’d learned that before.

I got lost in the words, forgetting myself, while my muscles unwound, and my body slumped. I might have fallen asleep, despite myself, if it hadn’t been that moment the door opened. The words flowing out of me stopped midline, cut short and clean, even as my head sprang up off the table and out of my arms. Every nerve in my body felt like it was tingling, and my head swam on a wave of dizzy vertigo.

Several people entered the room, but it was clear, when his appraising eyes met mine, who was my main concern. The one I would be dealing with, contending with. He was a big man in a long, black coat that swept around his feet when he walked. Triple lines of scar marred his face, and the way he wore the band of his _Hitai-ate_ up over his head, bandana fashion, made me think he was hiding more scars there.

This intimidating presence’s eyes swept me again, taking in my frozen features and the tear prisms in my wide, startled eyes, and I suddenly felt the need to swipe the evidence of my weeping off my face. Only the chains snapped me up short and I realized I couldn’t without dropping my head back into my hands.

He watched me do it, watched me stop, watched me slowly settle my hands back on the table, deciding to leave the oozing tears, and keep my head up. Gaging everything I did, determining just what kind he had to deal with. I sucked in a shuddering breath, while he did it, and my own eyes skittered over his face. There was something in me which said I should know this man. Should know the description of his features, even if I had never seen his face before. And it frightened me I should feel that way, frightened me I couldn’t place him when I should have that ability.

I wasn’t given long to fret over it, though. He didn’t let me stay in that way more than a few heartbeats. After he’d completed his initial sweep of me, while two of his assistants set up some form of recording equipment to one side, he lowered himself into the chair across from me and murmured, “Don’t let me stop you.”

This enigmatic statement left me reeling for a moment, until my mind caught on what he meant. The last thing I’d been doing before he walked in.

Singing.

_Don’t let me stop you from finishing your song_ , he meant. I stared at him blankly long enough for him to drop his gaze to the file he’d set on the table next to his hand, before doing the thing he clearly didn’t expect. The action I didn’t even expect of myself: picking up my song where I’d left off.

My voice broke and quaked, _shuddered_ , but I didn’t care. I looked in his face, while I got out the last verses, stuttered over the last lines.

_Let the rain carry you into the last goodnight,_

_Let the rain carry you, everything’s gonna be alright._

I had to sniff when it was done because I was still crying, and my nose was clogged.

Whatever the scarred man thought of me and my act and tears, he didn’t say. “What is that?” he asked instead.

“It’s an _Ame_ lullaby,” I managed. I shook my head, still trying to clear my tears, then I gave it up and dropped my face into my hands, so I could deal with myself properly. Smudging at the dampness with my fingertips.

“Sounds gloomy,” he commented.

A hiccupping, sobbing laugh came out of me. “ _Ame’s_ a gloomy place.”

“You say that like you’ve been there.”

“I was born in _Ame_ ,” I said absently, looking out between my fingers. I let this go easily because it didn’t matter. I didn’t care he knew.

“Funny, considering you’re not an _Ame shinobi_.”

I sniffed again, swiped at my eyes a last time with the back of a finger, and brought my head up. “I’m not anybody’s _shinobi_ , I’m a medical- _nin_.”

I watched him take this in, watched his face blank and something twitch under one of his scars, as he digested this information, picked it apart to see what it said about where my loyalties lay. My gaze was absent again. I didn’t care if he suspected my loyalties were skewed, any more than I cared if he knew where I was born, or I never would have said it. What he thought of my sensibilities was of no concern to me. He wouldn’t understand I didn’t have any loyalties he could comprehend and didn’t give two shits about those he did.

After a moment, he nodded. “So, what happened?”

“My family was killed.” My eyes dropped to my hands. I flexed the right and, without really thinking of it, my fingers began massaging the scar in the center of my palm. It was white. Old. A long, vertical slit that had bled profusely when I’d pulled the _kunai_ from it and tossed the blade away. “I escaped.”

“And you ended up working as an _Ishi_ medical- _nin_.”

I winced, looking up at him with pained eyes. “Yes.”

He didn’t say anything else for a moment, just watching me, trying to decipher that pain in my gaze and what it meant. I let him. I didn’t have the energy or ability to do anything more. What little I had was being diverted to keeping me upright and keeping me facing the man with something like a semblance of calm. The strain on my dwindling internal supplies left me listless. While he watched me, I found myself returning the glance with dispassionate anxiety churning in me. Again, that feeling I should know this man studying me swelled and I felt my face crumble at the sensation and the knowledge I still could not dredge his name out of the place it was lodged in me.

The dark eyes looking back at me noted it and the man seemed to take pity on me. “You look like you have something on your mind.”

“Please pardon me,” I said, voice cracking over the words, “but who are you?”

A flicker in his eyes. “I’m Ibiki Morino.”

“I… see.” It was like everything in me had dropped out of me, leaving me hollow and blank, wishing to wrap myself in my arms. Only I couldn’t because my wrists were still manacled to the table. I felt all the blood drain out of me and my eyes unfocus. “That’s… why I thought I knew you. He mentioned you once. Said I should be glad not to meet you. I suppose this means this is _Konoha_.”

I was rambling and hardly even knew what I was saying, what words were coming out of my mouth. At some point after he’d said his name, I’d gripped my left hand with my right and started massaging it, trying to compulsively rub feeling back into the numb digits.

“You seem disoriented,” he noted.

My eyes wavered and turned to him. “War has a way of doing that to a person.”

He nodded. “It does. How long have you been on the front lines?”

I stared at him, seeing how easy it would be to reply to that causal question, how easy to follow it without a thought. As though this were just a normal conversation. My fingers were working on my hand. Working, working, in endless destress over my numb limb. Noticing it, I felt the tears start hot at the back of my eyes again and gave into them, dropping my head back into my hands and letting my shoulders shake with the sobs.

No one said anything. Morino let me cry myself out, until I was a bit quieter, a little calmer. Then he spoke, his voice pitched low, striving at being as gentle as the situation allowed. “We can start with something easy. What’s your name? We searched our records for an _Ishi_ medical- _nin_ matching your description but couldn’t find anything.”

Sucking in a breath that shuddered my whole, slight body, I scrubbed at my eyes with the tips of my fingers. It was amazing how exhausting crying was. The act left you physically and mentally empty and so worn. Red-eyed, I tilted my head to look up at him.

Something easy he’d said. Something to get me talking and make all the other talking that would come later feel easier, more natural yet again. Sniffing, I pressed the palms of my hands flat to my face, then I lifted my head again, trying to find something to hold onto mentally. “People call me Ko.”

I felt dizzy again and wished the world would stop spinning. I’d make it easier to concentrate on the man if everything didn’t feel upside-down. His voice seemed to come to me from far away. “People call you that, or it’s your name?”

I laughed a little, hitching sound and the laughter in itself, as broken as it was, seemed to help. “There is a difference, isn’t there? People call me Ko. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to tell you my name, Morino- _san_. It wouldn’t matter if I did; you wouldn’t know it and there wouldn’t be any record of it. I stopped being the person it belonged to a long time ago. I’m Ko. Just Ko.”

His intent gaze took in every twitch and tick I made, while I said it. I knew he noted how my fingers went back to tracing the scar on my right palm, but I couldn’t stop it and it didn’t matter anyway.

“Alright, we’ll let it go for now, Ko,” he said, after a moment. “Tell me about being a medical- _nin_ in _Ishigakure no Sato_.”

_We’ll let it go for now._ A hint we’d come back to it later. A weight of despair and dread on me. But not like those other words. That second invitation to speak. I knew this tact. The way of slow patience and gentle prodding. The strategy used on those already half broken and likely to talk, if steered with enough softness.

Yes, I knew the tact, and I knew where it led when it proved ineffective.

My eyes swam. I didn’t have enough moisture left to cry properly, but I still clung to the fringes of it. “You’re going to torture me, aren’t you?”

Ibiki sighed because here were signs the _nin_ sitting before him wasn’t as broke or ready to speak as he hoped. Though I wept unabashedly, I’d still blatantly informed him I wouldn’t tell him my name and now inquired how much he was going to hurt me. “I’d prefer not to, Ko, and there isn’t any need for it to come to that. You’re a medical- _nin_. I don’t like breaking medical- _nin_ , if I don’t have to. Just talk to me about _Ishi_ and we can take this ease.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you.”

His face was unreadable, but that twitch moved under his scar again, while he took this in. Such a polite and terrified refusal to speak and take things simply. “Can’t or won’t, Ko?” he asked after another moment of pondering me.

Heart thumping, it was like I collapsed into my hands. My face was hot in my palms. “There is a difference there too, isn’t there?” This was strained, as stretched out as if the collar around my neck really was choking me. “I won’t talk to you, Morino- _san_ , I’m sorry.”

Silence greeted this, but I didn’t look up. I knew he was thinking, considering. His voice was still soft when it came. “I don’t want to do this the hard way with you, Ko.”

Another, tiny laugh, like a whimper. “Because I’m a medical- _nin_.”

“Yes, among other reasons. Talk to me, Ko. You said it yourself, you’re nobody’s _shinobi_ , you’re a medical- _nin_. A lot less people are likely to die if you tell me what you know and help us end this war.”

“I don’t give a fuck!” The words broke out of me, tearing out my throat with enough force I at last did choke under the collar. The room went still in a way I knew meant I’d startled even the famed torture of _Konoha_ with the rawness of my outburst, but I didn’t care for this. Didn’t care what he saw when I coughed and coughed and raised my head to shriek it at him again, defying the collar’s ability to strangle me. “I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck how many live or die! You and all your villages can burn for all I care!” Then I slumped, the last of my precarious energy evaporating out of me, and another half-hearted round of weeping replacing it. “I won’t talk to you, I won’t,” I whimpered. “It’d be better if you just killed me.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Ko.” This was low. Soft.

“I wish you would.”

That twitch moved under his scar, while he read my words. Read the sheen of tears across my eyes and the helplessness and desperation beneath them. His next words were careful, borderline kind. “When they took you, our operatives reported they saw and pursued several members of your squad. They were injured, but mobile, and managed to elude our ANBU. They’re alive, Ko.”

I knew what he was doing, how he was trying to reassure me I still had reason to live. Doubtless he had worked on medical- _nin_ who were the last of their squad before and didn’t want to deal with such an unpredictable creature again, if he could help it. But in his reassurance, he had misjudged, under lack of information. “They weren’t my squad,” I let out, voice tear-rough and wounded from my shouting. This too I didn’t care if he knew. Yet, it was information he took in with care. I’d given him the unexpected, once more.

A medical- _nin_ who, by his own admission, didn’t care for the lives of others and disavowed the teammates he had been working with. The blankness of his face said he hadn’t worked on something quite like me before.

“They weren’t your squad. But you were working with them.”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t talk to me.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

His fingers found the edge of the file near his hand and toyed with it, while he sighed a second time. “Maybe a few days in a cell will change your mind.”

My eyes unfocused again when he ordered a few of his assistants to take off the manacles and escort me away.


	2. Ishi Eulogy

**Laughing Bull** : That is no ordinary star. That is the tear of a warrior. One who has finished his battle somewhere on this planet. A pitiful soul that could not find its way to the great spirit that awaits us all.

**-Cowboy Bebop, Jupiter Jazz Part One**

They didn’t bring me to a typical cell, rather something deeper and more anxious. I had a sense of what it was before they locked me in, but there was nothing I could do about it, but pull up short in the doorway. Stiff. My heart catching and panic slipping into resignation, as an ANBU took me by the shoulder with a hard, steely hand and pushed me forward a step. Just enough to close the door behind me. There was something to be said for sleep deprivation as a form of torture. It messed with a person’s head and left them unbalanced and susceptible. Not to mention physically drained. Sensory deprivation was another matter along the same line. It left a person desperate and grasping.

The cell they left me in was designed to deprive me of almost everything. It was dark. Not the dark of a room at night, but the dark of an underground place that’d never known the sun. So dark I couldn’t see my hand when I held it right before my eyes. The darkness itself seemed unnatural. Heavy and padded. Weighted with _substance_ in a way in immaterial thing should not be. It was the kind of darkness that got into your head and made you feel disoriented and dizzy, so you couldn’t even stand up without tottering. Made you want to cower in a corner, so at least you could feel something solid around you and know you were real and not just some disconnected conciseness in a void.

But the cell made this desire impossible. It wasn’t small, as one would expect. It was vast to the point of extravagance, so one would have to stumble and shuffle forward blindly or feel their way along the ground what felt endlessly before bumping into a wall. One which was freezing. The walls were cold to the point being near them let the cold creep into you and set you shivering. An unacceptable state in a cell which lacked bed or blanket or _anything_.

The one warm spot in the whole of the impossible place was near the center of the cell. Leaving me to huddle there, wrapped only in my arms, and attempting to keep myself together. A thing made all the harder because the cell was also so utterly silent, apart from my breathing.

My single comfort was the fact I had not been restrained. Once released from the table in the interrogation room, they hadn’t seemed to find it necessary to bind me, beyond the _chakra_ sealing collar. I tested the device with my fingers, after exploring the confines of my enormous prison, but could not get it off. The thing was snapped closed with a _chakra_ lock. Meaning I needed _chakra_ to release the catch but couldn’t use any until I got the collar off…

Investigation done, there was nothing else to do.

Nothing to see but darkness. Nothing to smell but stone. Nothing to hear, not even the drip of water, but the echoes of my own rustling movements.

Nothing.

Myself and the dark and the racing thoughts in my head.

And hunger. They didn’t feed me, but they brought water what I thought was twice a day. The action accompanied by the scrape of metal, as some ANBU slid open the grate on my door and clicked down a cup on the stone. Yet, even this wasn’t followed by light. None trickled in from the hall. No word from unseen lips and no brightness to break the dark encasing me. Just tepid water left far away, necessitating I crawl to it. Feeling my way over the smooth floor, trying to find the water without spilling it was harder than one would think. All too often, I would feel the cup tipping and the water spilling over my fingers before I knew I was even near it.

The loss of the water was harsh, but at least the routine of it allowed me a slender sense of time. Four times. Four times the grate opened, offering me a reprieve from the emptiness. Four times altogether and what I imagined to be twice a day equaled two days.

Two days alone.

It made me want to weep, but I hardly had the liquid in me to do so. Or the energy. All I had I used to comfort myself the only way I could. With song. My voice sounded hollow in the large space, bouncing back from the thick walls, but I didn’t care. None of it mattered. All that mattered was the act of raising my littering, wavering voice in the dark. I exhausted both my supply of songs and internal resources, until I fell into twitching, uneasy sleep, only to wake with a jerk and do it all over again.

Repeatedly.

I started curled in on myself and ended sprawled in that one warm spot, laying on my stomach, my right hand under my face and the left covering it, for the feeling of flesh on my skin. A childish reassurance to match a childish terror of the dark. Only… Was it childish? It was being used against me and it hurt. My very mind felt heavy and numb, and I cried out like a wounded thing when the door finally opened, flooding me with mellow light, like a fan of pain. For what felt an endless time, I’d _wanted_ light, but when it came, I shrank away from it, covering my eyes. It was too bright and the hands pulling me up too rough and I was dazed.

None of it felt real, until I was returned to the chair in the interrogation room and secured in the manacles, once more. Then left alone, I found myself weeping because there was _something_ around me again. Even if I could hardly keep my eyes open in the dim, honeyed light to _see_ it.

I was a little calmer when Ibiki and his assisting _nin_ came. But calm in a detached kind of way. Unfeeling. Mostly, I was just hanging in my chair, breathing, and looking out through my lashes. My face was wet and my body trembling from exertion. Neither fact I tried to hide when the scarred man sat across from me. “Hello, Ko,” he said, nonthreateningly. As if this were normal. To him, perhaps it was.

“Morino- _san_ ,” I returned, voice brittle from too much crying, not enough water, and insufficient sleep. It was startlingly hard to sleep when you couldn’t tell dream from reality. When the dark had crept into you and locked your mind in a stranglehold.

He just watched me, and I just let him. Then I gave a low moan and put my head in my hands, so I could open my eyes a little wider, peering out through my fingers. By degrees, my eyes adjusted to the level of light in the room. It took time, but Ibiki gave me that time. Maybe sensing I needed it, or I’d never be able to answer him coherently.

This thought was confirmed when he gently asked, “How are you, Ko? Are you able to talk with me?”

Another moan escaped me. I took a few shuddering, steadying breaths and scrubbed at my face. When my cheeks were clear of tacky tear residue, I was able to bring my head up and blink at him like an owl. “I’m here, Morino- _san_ ,” I rasped.

He considered me for some while, as if deciding whether he believed me. His eyes flickered when he reached a decision. He nodded. “Are you hungry, Ko?”

I stared at him blankly, dispassionately, trying to hide the whirling conflict of emotions in me, but my stomach proved traitor, letting out a hollow growl. A fact which made me absently wonder just when I’d eaten last. I couldn’t actually recall. Sometime before I was brought to what I assumed was the _Konoha_ Intelligence Division, three, four days before. The ANBU who’d taken me had tried to get me to eat, but I couldn’t remember swallowing much. I couldn’t dredge much memory from those days between capture and interrogation, beyond fractured shards.

The detached, unfocused way I was looking through the man assessing me wasn’t lost on me for long. I took another breath, and let my attention settle on his scarred face. “You know I am, Morino- _san_.” This was strained. Because I knew this tact as well. Withholding food for lengths of time, then offering it, but just out of reach, was effective in ways some wouldn’t expect. Hunger, when it rooted deep enough down in the pit of someone, left a person wild and desperate. Somewhat feral, even. Like the starved animal they were becoming. Eventually, a person would do just about anything for food. I wasn’t so feral, yet. “Let’s not play. I don’t have the energy for your game of reward and punishment. I won’t talk to you.”

Ibiki had no doubt taken in the shift of expressions on my face. What he thought of them was hard to say. His voice was even when he spoke. “I’m not playing with you, Ko.”

“Aren’t you?” My voice, on the contrary, was cracked. “Tell me, Morino- _san_ , have you ever been deprived of food?” I shivered, then drooped forward, listless, my right hand gripping my left, fretting with it. “I once went ten days under duress.” My voice moved from cracked to strained so thin I could hardly hear it. “I don’t want to play.”

“This isn’t a game, Ko.” The soft reassurance in those words, pulled my head up to meet his gaze. Dark, but intent. “You need to eat. You’re no good to either of us if you’re weak.” He waved a hand while he said the last, gesturing to his assistants, who moved about at my back. One of them came around from behind me, making me flinch as he brushed too near, and passed something to my interrogator. Morino leaned forward, in turn, to set this before me, pushing it to me with his fingertips.

My eyes dropped, blinking at a fist-sized rice ball sitting on a plate, and I felt them well, the hot prick of tears building against my will, and I swallowed to force the burn in my throat down. _Not the way of reward and punishment then…_ The thought was visceral, but the act of swallowing made me realize a more pressing fact.

“I need water.” A broken little sentence.

“Now who’s playing, Ko?” This was low, but it brought my focus back up.

“I’m not trying to get anything from you. I’m just stating a fact. If you want me to eat this, I’ll need water. My mouth is too dry to swallow it.”

Ibiki sighed and motioned with a finger. We traded gazes, while his assistants moved behind me again, unnecessarily coming around my side and passing a cup to Ibiki, only so he could set it next to the plate. Intimidation, but…

Tears pooled in my eyes, despite myself. _The way of kindness._ He was still using that. The most uncertain and, perhaps, slowest means of extracting information, but an effective one, all the same. It was difficult to resist kindness when you were hurt and terrified, even if that gentleness came from the one harming you. Place a person in enough mental or physical distress and offer them kindness and all they would want was to give in. To take the extended comfort and wrap themselves in it.

Sniffing, I reached for the stoneware cup. My hands stilling when another realization took me. “It’s going to be very difficult for me to eat like this.” Because my hands were still locked in manacles bound to the table by short lengths of chains. I would have to bring my face close to the table to get the water and food to my mouth.

“You’re fishing, Ko.” The words were low, a touch long-suffering.

“I’m not asking for anything, I’m just noting… that…” The words I spoke in turn trailed off my lips, my capacity to speak stollen the moment I raised my eyes and saw the man was no longer sitting. Quiet, as only a _shinobi_ could be, even one of his size, Ibiki had stood up and was coming around the table toward me.

My breathing fell from its rhythm. Short, sharp, shallow breaths started coming out of me, like I was hyperventilating, like my breaths were being cut off before they could reach my lungs, depriving me of air. My eyes dilated and unfocused, even as I pressed back in the chair and helplessly raised my head to take him in. Feeling seemed to flee my body, my mind disconnecting from it, to float above me, and a wave of heated tingling spread all through me. I wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to _ESCAPE_ , but could do nothing but gasp those stark pants. Even when he touched me and the feeling of his skin on mine was a course burn along my oversensitive flesh, I couldn’t manage to cry out, only sit under him like a small bird with fluttering heart, caught in the talons of a hawk, watching death close in. Watching while my vision blurred and blackened from want of air.

I couldn’t even calm myself, or the pulse of my heart, when he leaned away from me and paced back to his chair. If was several long minutes before I could work through the atrophy in my muscles and mind enough to just lower my head and see what he’d done. To understand he’d unlocked the cuff around one of my wrists, freeing my right hand.

“You seem distressed.” It was spoken low, light. As if I might bolt if he said it louder.

Dazed, it felt like my gaze drifted up to him. I couldn’t feel the hand he’d gripped while he’d unlocked the manacle, couldn’t feel anything but weight. Weight and unreality. “I don’t like to be touched.” It was barely a movement of my lips, yet…

 _Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! That was the wrong thing to say!_ I knew the moment the statement left my mouth it was a mistake, but there was nothing I could do, no way to take it back. All there was, the whole of me, was watching the set of his face while he observed me in this state, took in my _distress_ and the paper paleness of my cheeks.

“Touch aversion,” he murmured, setting the knowledge in his mind for later use. “Natural or acquired?”

I stared at him a moment, still attempting to gather myself, then let the question hang, unanswered, dropping my eyes to the water and testing my ability to use the hand he’d freed. It felt surreal to hold the cup and be able to bring it to my lips unhindered.

But more than that, it felt otherworldly to simply drink. The water was cold and sweet, and I felt it filling all the dry places in me. I drank the glass dry and stared into the dregs, wishing there was more, but not daring to ask for anything else. Instead, feeling my motions were automated, I slid the cup away and reached for the rice ball. I hated eating in front of people, and I couldn’t bring myself to pick the thing up. My fingers plucked at it restlessly instead, breaking off a piece I could put on my tongue and chew slowly.

My concentration was forcibly away from Ibiki. I did not like seeing his face watching me ignore him, studying my coming down from the panic he’d so easily induced in me. Yet, swallowing mechanically, I came to realize he was looking at me strangely. Examining me with the tiniest trace of uncertainty on his carefully neutral features. Or, perhaps indecision. As if he wanted to decide something but couldn’t quite make up his mind.

“You… just can’t seem to be sure, can you?” I said low, startled by the fact.

“Be sure,” he returned.

“Of my gender.” A wild, little laugh came out of me and I covered my mouth with my hand to try stifling it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said then, on the borderline of tears and swiping at my eyes with my free hand.

I really _was_ sorry. I did not want to offend this man, did not want to infuriate the one holding the power in this room, but I couldn’t help myself, and I could understand his confusion. My appearance did not make it easy for one to label me. My body was small for someone of my age range, compact in many ways, and wiry with muscle, but the folds of the white medical- _nin_ uniform I wore rendered it almost formless. Yet, even the swaths of fabric I was wrapped in would show a chest if I had one of any substance. Mine was flat, defying the image of me as female. But, on the other hand, my features were fine and delicate and far too pretty to suite the image of a typical male. And I intentionally lacked other defining traits. I wore no odd bits of color or little signs of personality others liked to decorate their persons and uniforms with, and, most often, I kept my voice pitched low. Soft. Making it a sultry duplicity of lightness and deeper, darker undertones. Even my hair was a contradiction. I kept it mid length, so the fringes of it teased at the high collar of my uniform. Normally, I would wear it in a snub ponytail, but I’d lost the tie somewhere along the line leading me to this room with Morino. The strands were silken but untidy. Cut rough, uneven. And no wonder. I thought the last time I’d cut it, I’d let an _Ishi-nin_ grip my ponytail and hack off the excess length with a _kunai_. Not something most females would care for. All around, all of me was a mass of too many features set in too many different ways, leaving me… somewhat indefinable.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, turning a face full of emotions I could not hide on the scarred man. “I’m non-binary, I don’t identify as any gender, so sometimes it’s nice to leave people guessing.” Another swipe at my eyes because tears were leaking. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

“You’re puzzling, Ko,” he told me.

“No,” I countered, fingers returning to the rice ball, “I’m just myself. But you can think of me as male, if that makes this easier for you.” Though, why I should care for what made this easier for him, I didn’t know. It was true, some found it difficult to interrogate females, but I didn’t think Ibiki was that kind. He’d likely worked on as many women as men.

Both the panic attack and my burst of hysterical laughter left me tired. Mentally worn, I pulled another bit of food off the whole and put in in my mouth, my eyes down and attention scattered. I wasn’t expecting Morino’s probing voice when it came. “Tell me about your family, Ko. They were _Ame shinobi_ , weren’t they?”

I swallowed and my fingers left the food, my left thumb finding the scar in my right palm, the nail scrapping over the raised skin. The cast of Ibiki’s face told me he saw the pained expression cross my features, but there was nothing I could do about that, as I absorbed this prompt to speak. This invitation to start unburdening myself to him and this experiment in what I would release and what I wouldn’t. Did it matter if he knew this?

“No, they weren’t,” I let out of a tight throat.

That little twitch moved under the man’s scar. “Your family weren’t _Ame-nin_?”

“If you mean, were we ever trained in the _Ame_ academy, recorded as _shinobi_ , or sent on missions, then no. We weren’t.”

“You were civilians,” he mused.

“We were nomads,” I corrected. “We were free. I think I crossed half of the Land of Rain before I could walk.”

“So, what happened?” he questioned, and I knew what he meant. _What happened to push an_ Ame _civilian to become an_ Ishi _medical-_ nin _on the frontlines?_

“They were killed, I escaped.” I remembered telling him something of this information before, but I repeated it for him, my head dropping, my thumb swirling over and over my palm.

“Your family were civilians and they were killed?” There was just a touch of disbelief in the words. Just enough to induce me to keep talking.

My face came up, bare and open and further pained. “People die in war.”

“Yeah, they do,” he agreed. “How old were you?”

“I think seven.”

“You think or you know, Ko?”

“I think. I don’t know, I don’t care. War has a way of distorting a person’s sense of time.”

“It does,” he agreed. “Is that where the scar on your palm came from? You touch it every time you talk about your family.”

Instinctually, I stopped the motion of my thumb over my palm. Trapped by this fact I couldn’t help and the other fact he had noticed. Of course, he would catalog all my tics. It should have been expected. “Yes.” I raised my right hand, palm outward, to cover my right eye. “I caught a _kunai_ coming for my face. I must have been a good aim, too. I threw it back and it hit him in the hip, gave me just enough time…”

I trailed away, letting my hand fall. Tired again. But the man wasn’t done with me.

“Is that when you stopped using your name?”

Weary and wet, my eyes settled on his. “Yes. I died with my family, Morino- _san_. I didn’t feel I was the person it belonged to anymore.”

I watched him watching me. The man’s dark gaze was fixed on me in an intent scrutiny, trying to decipher all the things I didn’t say, as well as those I had. “What did you do next, Ko?”

My fingers went back to the rice ball, tearing away pieces I didn’t eat. “I wandered. I almost starved, but I was picked up by… by…” I faltered and found myself hunching over, real tears, hot and thick ripping out of my eyes, as I wondered if I could go on. Did it matter if he knew this? Did it?

“Who found you, Ko?” he asked gently.

“A missing- _nin_ ,” I sobbed. “A medical- _nin_ from the Land of Grass, if you’ll believe it.”

“Medical- _nin_ rarely go rogue,” he noted, and I found myself nodding, not bothering to wipe away my tears.

“Kazue didn’t leave his village because he hated it. He left it because he believed medical- _nin_ shouldn’t be bound to villages or the politics that govern them. He thought medical- _nin_ should be separate entities, crossing borders and healing anyone in need, regardless of loyalties. He left his village to be an example of that. He didn’t care where he was or who he healed, if he saw suffering, he ended it. He saved me.”

I was full on weeping when I finished. As he had on all the other occasions I’d broken down, Ibiki let me cry myself out before he spoke again. Softly nudging me on. “He taught you _ninjutsu_ , this missing- _nin_. Kazue.”

“Yes. He trained me as a medical- _nin_ , he gave me another life.”

“And what happened?”

“He was killed.”

My face was damp but my eyes bare of tears when I looked at him. The scarred man looked back at me. Appraising. “Like your family.”

“People die in war,” I repeated. Then I hitched a dry sob and covered my face with my hand.

“What happened to you, Ko?”

“I died. I died again, right alongside Kazue and the life I thought I could live.”

He took this in, still unreadable in his probing. “How old do you think you were?”

“Thirteen. I’m not sure. The years with Kazue… I didn’t need time then.”

“Fair. How old do you think you are now, Ko?”

“Maybe fifteen. Does it matter?”

“Not really. When Kazue died, what did you do then, Ko?”

I stared at him, blank. Almost dazed again. Then my eyes fell away and settled on the rice ball. I saw my fingers had shredded it into pieces I had not eaten. Had forgotten. “I’m sorry,” I said pushing the plate away. “I can’t eat anymore. I feel sick.”

“I’m not going to let you starve yourself, Ko,” he warned softly.

This gave me pause, but I shook my head. “I don’t have any intention of starving myself, Morino- _san_ , I just can’t. I can’t.” All of this was true. The notion of starving myself hadn’t even occurred to me, until he’d said it. Perhaps because I’d had no control over food for so long, only eating when it was given to me and forgetting it otherwise. But in the moment, I knew I couldn’t swallow more of the rice ball, which to me had been tasteless, but was likely chosen to be easy on my empty stomach. If I even tried to put more in my mouth, I would lose what little I’d managed to ingest.

These thoughts were scattered by the man’s next gently spoken words and change of tactic. “Who in _Ishi_ told you about me, Ko?”

I jerked, head snapping up to him in a reaction I couldn’t hide. “What?”

“When you asked my name, you said someone had mentioned me once. Said you should be glad not to meet me. Who was it, Ko?”

All I could do was stare at him again through wide, terrified eyes. I choked on one sharp gasp, then stopped breathing altogether because I had said that, I _had_ , and I hadn’t even remembered because I’d been _disoriented_ and I’d let it slip and couldn’t take it back and I- I-

I watched myself falling apart in the flickering on Ibiki’s eyes. Noted how he accessed me in my startled, unwound state, and could do nothing about it. He had me and his next, soft repetition threw me over the edge. “Who was it, Ko? Who in _Ishi_ knew me?”

“No.” It was a barely there, dazed, little exhale. Then, “No!” Blind panic wasn’t the right description for what I experienced. Mindless, animal desperation would have been better. Neither was right. Panting, I yanked on the chain still holding my left wrist, heedless of the fact I couldn’t break it. It was a viscous jerk and it caught me up short, jarring my shoulder, making me cry out, and cutting the skin on my wrist where the manacle dug into the soft flesh. When this proved ineffective in freeing me, I clawed at the cuff, spreading blood over it and digging furrows in the skin around it, then degenerated to just pulling, pulling, pulling against the chain, until I thought I’d dislocate my arm.

Ibiki must have thought so as well. My sudden, adverse reaction to his question threw him for a moment, but only that. “Stop it, Ko,” he warned, standing and leaning mover the table with his palms pressed to its surface. “Stop it.”

Out of seeming nowhere, rough hands were pulling me back, thrusting me into the metal backrest of the chair I sat in and pinning both my arms to the armrests, as two of the man’s assisting ANBU reached to restrain me and insure I did what Ibiki instructed. That I stop it. Their hands on me were like razors in my mind, causing a new reaction. My breathing went ragged and unnatural again, even while I fell limp. My sight blurred and doubled, and my mind went blank. As if something had snapped there, nothing else would process. For me, everything ground to a standstill. There was a white light going on in my head irradiating all else.

The moment hung, marked only by the static intakes of my breaths. The deep throb of my heart, like a pain in my chest.

Then Ibiki spoke, tone low but sure. “You can let him go. He won’t try to injure himself further, will you, Ko? Will you, Ko?” he repeated, when I didn’t answer.

My head dragged toward him and my dull eyes tracked to his. Insentient.

“Let him go,” my interrogator said again.

The hands released me, and my eyes fluttered closed, almost rolled up. Semi-consciousness held me in its grasp for an indeterminate time, but Ibiki was patient. He called me back before I was ready to come and was still on his feet when I parted my eyelids to look at him in response to my name.

“Ko? Are you with me, Ko?”

The opening of my eyes was the only reply I gave him.

“I want you to answer me, Ko. Who in _Ishigahure_ knew me?”

“No, please, no,” I begged. I shook with sobs and, reflectively, my right hand went to claw at the cuff holding the left. I noted it, noted the blood and the wound. It would be so easy to heal, if my _chakra_ were not sealed, but it was, and I couldn’t, and it didn’t matter anyway. Fingers coated in my own blood, I dumped my head into my arms and curled in on myself, covering my head with my hands, attempting to make myself small. Attempting to hide.

“Ko.” It was soft, but it hurt me.

“Don’t ask me, please don’t ask me.”

“I’m asking, Ko.”

I jerked and moaned because this was spoken just above me. He’d moved soundlessly again and was standing by me, a soft-spoken threat. “Who was it, Ko?” His hand slid along the table, a promise he would touch me, and I slithered away from it, as far as my bounds would allow without raising my head.

“Sakumo Ishida!” The words burst out of me, a scream into the shield of my arms.

Ibiki’s hand was removed and I slumped, weeping raggedly. “Sakumo Ishida,” he repeated, tone dry. “The man they call my counterpart in _Ishi_. How do you know Sakumo, Ko? What work were you doing in the _Ishi_ Intelligence Division?”

“No.” It was a whimper and I didn’t care. My hands no longer covered my head. They were wrapped around the front of it and the right moved on the left, seeking to return feeling where there was none. “Please don’t make me. Please, please.”

“You were there, weren’t you, Ko?” This was soft but insistent. “You met Sakumo. But maybe you didn’t work with him. I’ve seen his handiwork before, and you fit the pattern. He tortured you, didn’t he, Ko?”

I twitched, then lay still, my heavy breaths the only sound, until the famed torturer of _Konoha_ went on.

“It was _Ishi-nin_ who killed Kazue, wasn’t it? But you didn’t escape that time, like you did when your family died. It’s no secret _Ishi_ is low on _nin_ and resources. They found you and, instead of wasting a trained medical- _nin_ no one would miss, they took you back to the Land of Rock and gave you to Sakumo for convincing, didn’t they, Ko?”

“Please, please,” I babbled out, “stop it. Stop talking about it. It hurts.”

“I need you to say it, Ko.” His hand rested on the table again, so close to me, so inescapable. “I need you to tell me if that’s how it was.”

“He killed me!” It was a scream. My eyes shut over my tears, forcing them out over my cheeks, and my back arched up with the force of the words. “They let him kill me! How many times do I have to die before you _shinobi_ are satisfied?!”

It was no surprise the _chakra_ sealing collar choked me for the crime of my violence in words, and I deflated, gasping and coughing, until I could breathe, once more. Distant horror tingled along my spine and fingertips. So much I hadn’t wanted to say had spilled out for Ibiki, like my blood staining the table, and for what? For the threat of his touching me. I’d thought I could hold more back, thought I could withstand longer. I had once. I’d managed more with Sakumo. He’d _had_ to touch me, _had_ to hurt me before I gave him what he wanted, but now… Now my mind was still flayed from Sakumo and I fell to pieces at the idea of a hand.

Ibiki sighed a sound above me. “What happened after Sakumo broke you, Ko?”

“They kept me in the _Ishi_ Intelligence Division, putting _nin_ back together people like you took apart.” My voice was harsh, roughened by my screaming and choking and disgust at myself.

“How long were you there?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember, I don’t want to.”

“Ko-”

“Maybe six months! They kept me locked in a cell and only let me out when they wanted me to fix something!”

“They kept you where they could hold you under surveillance and maybe drive home a point about what would happen if you misbehaved. When they were convinced you’d cooperate, where did they take you? Did you work in the hospital, Ko?”

“Yes.” This was a little less pained. “I was a skilled surgeon, they needed the hands in the operating rooms. I did what they asked, I helped people.”

“You’re a medical- _nin_ , it’s what you do, Ko.” He said it as kindly as he could, an attempt to sooth, now that I was talking. “How long did they keep you there?”

“I- I don’t… Please, I don’t know. It was too long. More than a year, not two- I don’t know!”

“Alright, Ko. Breathe.”

I tried. I did, but only gasped, moving restlessly on the table, not wanting to look up, not wanting to speak. Expecting what would come next…

“After the hospital, did they send you to the frontlines? What you’ve told me doesn’t account for the two years between your capture and our finding you. What happened in that unaccounted time, Ko?”

A shudder passed over me, but I let silence greet his request I finish it and tell him all.

“Talk to me, Ko,” the man above me prompted. “I don’t want to have to make this harder on you.”

“Kill me, just kill me,” I moaned, “I’m dead already.”

“I already told you, I’m not going to kill you, Ko.”

“You are, you are.” It was sob, devoid of tears. I’d run out of the moisture to cry properly again.

“You admitted it, Ko. They killed your mentor, tortured you, and forced you into a conflict you wanted no part of. You have no reason to be loyal to _Ishigakure_.”

“ _Ishi_ can burn in all the hells there might be!” My voice broke, but I didn’t care. Let it.

Ibiki sensed my sentiment. Voice so low when he spoke. “So, why not tell me what you know about their positioning on our borders?”

My continued silence pushed another sigh from him. “Who are you protecting, Ko? It isn’t them and I don’t think it’s yourself.”

“I won’t talk to you, I won’t.” Broken determination and the desire for tears thickened the words. Ibiki took them in and lingered over me a moment, as if deciding whether to extend a hand and frighten me into speaking, or to otherwise.

Ultimately, he stepped back. “Maybe you need more time.”

I knew what this meant.

Back to the dark. Back to the cell.


	3. Borderlands Waltz

**Faye Valentine** : “You’re going to die.”

 **Gren** : “I’m not afraid to die.”

 **Faye Valentine** : “You’re lying.”

 **Gren** : “Either way, I won’t last much longer.”

**Cowboy Bebop, Jupiter Jazz Part Two**

I just lay there and let the cell have me.

On my back, in that one warm spot, with my eyes open in the dark, my limbs spread, as if I were making a child’s snow angel. But I wasn’t a child, and this wasn’t play. Songs fell off my lips, one after another, disordered, like my thoughts, and more murmured tone and rhythm than anything else. My voice was hardly a whisper. The act of song all I had and complete in itself, without the need of projection.

It hadn’t been long since my talk with Ibiki. Not long. They hadn’t even brought me water once, but the return to the cell had produced apathy in me after what I’d lost in the interrogation room. I wanted peace and remove and warmth. Not the cell. Not the dark and the emptiness that let my thoughts run like a stream, reminding me just how much I still had to lose.

Again and again, I came back to the lullaby I’d been singing when Morino first walked in on me. It started hot, salt pools to stand in my eyes and spill out down the sides of my face. But not sobs. Not heavy weeping. I had no energy or strength for it. Real bouts of crying took strength. Emotion was for the living. Quiet and indifference were for the dead.

The fact didn’t keep me from hiccupping little, hysterical rounds of laughter when the door opened, bathing me in light. “Come back so soon to talk?” I shuddered out because this time Ibiki had come with his ANBU. He didn’t answer me, but he didn’t let the ANBU manhandle me, either. One helped me to my feet, then none of them touched me, just closing around me while we walked.

Morino was at my back, in the center of the pack of faceless _nin_ escorting us and it agitated me. I could feel his gaze on my back, assessing every move I made, and it caused me to stumble, tears clouding my vision. “Just talk to me,” I pleaded at last, stopping and covering my eyes. “I can’t take it.” Because this was different, and I knew it and it frightened me.

“I’m here, Ko,” he reassured. “Keep walking. Everything will be alright.”

“No, it won’t, it won’t.” This was a sob. He shouldn’t be reassuring me. There was a lie somewhere and I called out his falsehood. “You’re lying.”

He didn’t deny it. Didn’t reassure further. Just let me stand there, crying, until I was spent and swaying. The least he did for me was not touch me. When I was calm again, all he murmured was, “Keep going, Ko.”

It was difficult to do, difficult to move my legs forward and to keep my eyes clear and my breathing even, but there was no other choice. Eventually, they would just force me or drag me, if I didn’t do as directed, and what would that earn me? Unwanted hands on my person before it was necessary they be there.

Still, I did not like the silence of Ibiki’s solid presence at my back. It lodged my heart in my throat and squeezed more tears from my eyes when we reached the interrogation room and he followed me to the table, even after the rest of the ANBU fell away to either side.

 _What are you going to do?_ The little, shivering question trembled on my lips, only to fall off into a shocked and despairing cry when he acted before I could speak it. I was shoved down onto the tabletop, one arm pinned behind me, the other grasping uselessly at the metal. I struggled, but my _chakra_ was sealed, my body was weakened from it all, and he was bigger than me. The arm he pinned was released but held down by his weight. He gripped my hair instead, and used it to turn my head, tilt it to bare my neck above the stiff leather of the _chakra_ collar. Tears dripped from my eyes and panic made me thrash. “Please… don’t.” I begged, then cried out again when a needle took me in the neck.

Warm spread through me from the injection site the moment he pressed the plunger and, though the knowledge of drugs in my blood made me want to wiggle and thrash still more, made me wish to scream, all I could do was moan a low thing in my throat, as my body went limp under him. At the sound and the feel of me untensing, Ibiki eased the needle from my neck and let go of my hair, allowing me to tuck my face into my arm. Letting me hide from him the only way I could. Yet, I couldn’t even cry. My tears felt locked in me and I could only lay there under him, breathing.

When the man above me seemed sure I wouldn’t resist any longer, he stood up out of the half recline he’d been bent in and tugged me off the table and into the chair. The action wasn’t rough, wasn’t hostile, but I still flopped into the seat, a boneless, child’s rag doll. My head lulled and rolled, and I found it hard to keep it steady. The world reeled around me and wavered. Everything that wasn’t Ibiki’s face, so close to mine, as he hunkered down beside me, flickered. Rippled like distorted glass or the shimmer of heated air. My body was slack and loose, but my heart fluttered in my chest, against my ribs, pushing my breaths out of rhythm, to keep up with its demand of air in my blood.

“Wha… What did… you…”

“Something to help you, Ko,” he said low, one hand braced on a thigh, the other carefully away from me, as he balanced himself there.

“To… help…” The words fell out one at a time, like the pants coming out of my mouth. My body felt as it had the few times I’d taken stimulants under Kazue’s direction. Sedate but jittering. As though I’d shake apart and fall asleep all at once.

“To help you talk to me.” This was gentle, but it made me moan again.

“Truth…” A strained little word out of a constricted throat.

“Truth serum,” Morino agreed. “Mixed with a strong sedative, to keep your heartrate down.”

My head rolled back and forth on the top of the backrest, as I tried to shake it in negation. My heartrate was _not_ down. It was soaring up my throat, and if this was how it reacted under the effects of an intentionally calming sedative, then… My head drooped to the side, features falling into accusatory lines I couldn’t seem to hide, as I faced Ibiki.

He absorbed it and seemed to answer my thoughts when he spoke. “What I gave you is a high-grade substance, not without the potential of adverse side effects. This isn’t my first choice in method, but you’re not giving me desirable options, Ko. You admit Sakumo broke you, but you’re still able to tell me no and hold back what you don’t want to tell me. Most who met Sakuma would have crumbled under a few words. The fact you haven’t shows you’re stronger than I initially gave you credit for, and I told you before, Ko, I don’t want to do this the hard way with you.”

I rolled my head in another sign of negation, tears starting at last because this was horrid, unbearable. My mind, my mind was being pilfered. _You’re killing me!_ I cried out mentally, despairingly. The internal call a forlorn whimper I couldn’t give voice to. He was trying to take the one sanctuary Sakumo had never managed to fully break.

The neutral mask facing me didn’t change, but he seemed to answer my thoughts, yet again. “I’m not going to kill you, Ko.”

I jerked, fright and deepening terror mixing through me, as my trembling fingers crept up to touch my lips. Had I just… said that? Had I?

My lips moved under my fingertips, my thoughts spilling out, expressing even my wondering if I was speaking aloud without knowing it, as I thought them. I gasped and saw the moment Ibiki understood I knew everything I was _thinking_ was slipping out of me in a flicker on his eyes. “No, please, no.” It was a choked whine that disintegrated to a gasping sob. I couldn’t breathe!

“Easy, it’s alright,” Ibiki soothed. “Talk to me, Ko. Then this can be over.”

A hysterical laugh, like the uncontrolled peels that’d come out of me when the cell door opened, burst through my tears and I hunched forward over my knees, gripping my hair. That twitch moved under Morino’s scar and something in his face betrayed the fact he was startled by my sudden movement, as if I shouldn’t have been capable of it, but I couldn’t pay attention to it. “Stop saying that. Stop saying it like that. You sound so much like him when you say it like that.”

“Who, Ko?” he questioned. “Who do I sound like?”

“Kazue.” It was a sob.

_It felt like I was delirious, like I was swimming through a fever. My body was hot and my heart thrumming, but everything felt slow. Disconnected. I couldn’t concentrate on anything and my thoughts bounded over one another._

_I’d been delirious then, too. Starved, weak, my hand festering and pumping poison through my blood. I’d tried to kill Kazue when he found me. Like a feral animal, I’d fought and scratched, until Kazue had knocked me unconscious and healed me, par force. But not before I’d rambled out everything, showed him all of me in a fever-induced rant. When I’d come out of it, he’d given me an ultimatum, crouched down by me and looked at me with his quiet, black eyes._

You have two choices _, he’d informed me,_ you can go looking for revenge, or you can stay here with me. You can’t do both, there isn’t room for it. Talk to me, Ko. What are you going to do?

 _I’d stayed. Of course, I’d stayed. What good would revenge do me? It wouldn’t bring anyone back, it wouldn’t bring_ me _back. I was dead. Dead for the first time, just like my family, but kept apart from them by a phantom of life in a land what wouldn’t stop weeping._

 _It was a full turn of seasons before I’d really talk to Kazue, despite the fact he was already teaching me medical_ ninjutsu _and I was learning with the quick efficiency of the prodigy accustomed to unpaused instruction. It was another turn or two of seasons before my anger cooled back and I began to really listen to Kazue and his crazy talk of peace and pacifism. There was a part of me that never quite believed in it, entirely trusted it. I’d seen too much death and tasted too much blood, but I wanted to believe. Thought I could live like that._

_Put my trust in a lie._

“Why didn’t you let me fight them?! Why didn’t you let me try?! I could have protected you!”

The words choked me under the collar, but if I was honest, I’d been choking and gasping for some time. The unharnessed flow of my thoughts ripping out of me, taking my breath and pushing my heart to hammer harder, harder, harder. Yet, this last left me coughing. Coughing so hard the fracturing, rippling world around me seemed to constrict and darken. Making Ibiki’s words come to me from what felt far away.

“Easy, Ko. Just breathe. That’s enough. I don’t need you to tell me anymore about Kazue.”

Still gasping, desperately trying to pull air into my lungs, I tried to turn to the man, tried to fix him in my flickering vision, and just felt my body pitching from the chair instead. A useless thing I couldn’t control. He had to touch me then, had to shove me back into the seat with one hand on my chest, there and taken away just as quickly, but I didn’t blame him. Didn’t blame him for keeping me from the floor any more than I truly resented him for what he was doing. For ripping me apart. It was his job, after all, responsibility to village, nothing personal.

I was laying, twitching, over the chair, my head drooping half on and half off the backrest, face part turned on the man I thought of, and it was easy to note the moment my thoughts tumbled off my lips and Ibiki realized I didn’t hate him. His dark, intent eyes flickered once, and that almost imperceptible tic moved under his scar. It should have made me uneasy how he cataloged the information for later use, but I wasn’t in a condition to care, and Ibiki didn’t give me long to contemplate the matter.

“Tell me about the frontlines, Ko,” he encouraged. “Did they take you there from the Hospital?”

I hiccupped something between a sob and hysterics. Despite myself, despite whatever cocktail of drugs my interrogator had shot into my system, my right arm moved to my left, hand crawling to grasp my shoulder, as I hunched into a ball. “It hurts! It hurts! Why does it still hurt?!”

 _It_ shouldn’t _still hurt. The thing had gone to scar and memory and phantom feeling years before. But it_ did _, it_ did _still hurt! And it’d hurt then, too. When the ANBU had come to the_ Ishi _Hospital and told me where they were taking me. I understood it. The fact of what they were doing. Of course, they would need medics on the front. They’d moved their lines across_ Ame _and_ Kusa _, all the way to the edge of the Land of Fire. They were losing men at every turn and could hardly afford to bring the injured back across two countries to_ Ishi _for treatment. It wasn’t a_ surprise _, but I still put up a fuss, still snarled and curled my fingers into claws, backing away into a corner and fighting them tooth and nail, until they’d held me down, sunk their fingers into my tender shoulder, and threatened to take me back to Sakumo if I didn’t behave._

Is that what you want?! Is it?!

 _I’d given in, gone limp, done what they asked because either way led to pain. At least the front was father away from_ Ishi _and Sakumo._

 _The frontlines, the borderlands of_ Kusa _and_ Konoha _, were a hell, chaos. I stitched so many_ nin _back together I stopped being able to tell them apart. Stitched them over and over and over, until there was nothing left to stitch anymore and all I could do was give them a painless death. I was moved from camp to camp to camp to camp, and through battlefields where I couldn’t tell what dying_ nin _belonged to what side because half their limbs were somewhere else. Oh Sage, I’d tasted so much blood I thought I’d never get the cloying essence of it out of my mouth._

 _I was strong, I had deep wells of_ chakra _, but even I couldn’t go on forever. They taxed me. I worked night and day and followed my guarding ANBU from conflict to_ Ishi _foothold in between dipping my hands into dying_ shinobi _. I got tired, I started falling behind. They hit me then. Frustrated with their failing advance and this near used up tool they were dragging with them. I’d missed my landing on a tree branch once and been punished with a blow to my abdomen for my trouble._ That _still hurt, too. I hadn’t healed it properly. They didn’t like it when I wasted time with myself._

_Other things were worse, though._

_Other things cut at me and hounded me in the dark, when I was alone. Faces that taunted me without end. Others who were dead, like me._

_Like the_ shinobi _I’d killed._

 _We were attacked, attacked so often moving between skirmishes and encampments. Sometimes those fighting the_ Ishi _ANBU would come for me, regardless of the uniform I wore. Sometimes they didn’t feel_ protective _of a tiny medical-_ nin _, sometimes they didn’t turn their blows aside when they spotted me. One came within a hair’s breadth of cutting me neatly in two. I could not unsee the surprise on his face when my weaponless, but oh so talented, hands, glowing with_ chakra _, had cut upward in a practiced slice in that particular hollow of his shoulder, severing the tendons there and making his sword arm drop, useless, even as I zipped over and sliced his throat in a killing move. The surprise on that face… The strange betrayal… I could still see them, like I could never get the heat of his blood off my face. I could never wash enough, never scrub with enough intent to eliminate the feel of it there._

“I didn’t want to! Don’t you understand?! I didn’t want to! He was going to kill me! I couldn’t die there! I couldn’t! Not there!”

I was screaming and I couldn’t stop, and I was fairly certain that was bad. My heart was going too fast, so fast I was seeing double. Or, was that because I couldn’t breathe? It made no never mind one way or another. The fact was, I was going to pass out or something was going to give. A person’s heart couldn’t go this fast for long and last.

Obviously, Ibiki thought or knew the same. “That’s enough, Ko,” he admonished, shifting forward, adjusting his balance. “You can stop. Just breathe for now.”

I did. I had no choice. Chest heaving, head lulling at an awkward angle, arm hanging and hand twitching, all I could do was comply. It was easier not talking, but not much because I wasn’t completely quiet, still muttering out every thought that crossed my mind.

“Easy, Ko,” Ibiki soothed further, withdrawing another needle from a pocket. “This will neutralize what’s in your system.” He reached for me and I just let him. No choice there, either. His hand slid into my hair and the needle into my neck.

The touch made me what to flinch, but coolness spread from where the needle was, and I moaned a thing like relief, my body slumping still more. Untensing in so many little ways. When Morino took the needle away, my consciousness trickled out. Blanked for an uncertain time.

“Ko.”

My name brought me back to some extent. Enough for me to jerk my head slightly and for my body to spasm once before falling back again. Everything still felt distant, but the heat in me had faded and my heart slowed to a more reasonable beat. Somewhat heavy and tired, but not pulsing up my throat any longer.

“Ko, are you with me?”

It was difficult to flutter my eyes open and the world still jittered at the edges, but things had steadied. Ibiki was still beside me and that was unfortunate and wrecking. What had I said? What had I _not_ said? My eyes squeezed closed again and tear tracks craved down my face.

“You must be.” The words were somewhat dry, as if the fact I were crying was as much as to say I was awake, somehow. A thing that rankled me. After all, _he_ was the one making me cry. Yet…

Effort. So much effort to bring my hand to my lips, but worth it to feel those traitor things laying still under my fingers. A little sob came out of me and my hand fell away to dangle.

“Gently, Ko.” Ibiki said softly. “You’ll take some time to recover. I’ll let you rest.”

I knew what this meant, and it made the tears come harder. “Please.” Not desperate. Something worse. Heartsick and lonely. “Don’t leave me alone in the dark, I can’t take it.”

Not that I had much choice. Dark unconsciousness would not wait, and I gave up to it.


	4. Frontlines Dirge

**Gren** : “You said that you don’t need comrades, but I’m attracted to that word. To the point of tears…”

**Cowboy Bebop, Jupiter Jazz Part Two**

Waking was a slow feat, and difficult. I felt drugged, _had been_ drugged, and I was worn on top of that. I did not want to wake. Did not want to find myself in the dark and silence again. I really couldn’t take it. I’d lose my mind. I’d come close before. With Sakumo. Would have given in and let the madness have me if it weren’t for-

I curtailed the thought, a wash of cold jolting through me, even as my body jerked, flashing back to those moments I’d had no control on my mind. _What had I said?! Had I told him?!_ I wasn’t sure and that terrified me, but I thought… thought I hadn’t…

There was little memory of exactly _what_ I’d said to Ibiki, but some trail of it lingered in my mind. The instant I’d understood my thoughts weren’t safe, all I’d had was the vulgar, unconscious notion all I could do to keep my secret was _not_ think about it. If I couldn’t think about it, I couldn’t speak it. Holding that in a death grip Morino would never understand, I concentrated on all the pain and driven my precious thing from all upper regions of my mind.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been given drugs and forced to resist. I’d been trained in resistance long before Sakumo.

And I hoped I’d succeeded.

But I didn’t know…

So, I let myself lay a moment, feigning sleep, to assess what condition I was in and just _where_ I was. Because the more I climbed toward full alertness, the more I understood I wasn’t in the cell.

Light slipped passed my closed eyelids and I wasn’t laying on stone. I was on my side on something soft. A cot. Not overly comfortable, but vastly better than stone. There was a rather flat pillow under my head and the soft folds of a blanket molded over my curves and angles.

All somehow both reassuring and disconcerting things. Reassuring in that I’d been moved to an average cell. Disconcerting because I wasn’t certain if that was because I’d told Ibiki what he wanted to know.

Oddly, the restraints were comforting because they said I might not have lost it all, just yet.

My wrists and ankles were held in soft leather cuffs and, when I eased my eyes open just a tiny fraction, to see out through my lashes, I could make out ropes trailing from them to the metal rails at the ends of the bed. All the binds were sure enough to keep me there, but loose enough to allow me movement and ensure there was no danger of cutting off blood flow. More than anything, a way of saying _don’t get any ideas_.

A strange thing for a prisoner in a cell they could not escape from. But, perhaps, less strange if you considered the fact Ibiki was asleep on a cot across from me. My interrogator was resting sitting up, his head hanging on his chest and his hands in his lap.

My heart skipped a beat in its rhythm, but I quilled the fear skittering in me. He really _was_ asleep. For one who knew how to fain sleep effectively, it was easy to tell when another was doing it. Morino was not acting. He was just… sleeping.

Beside me.

Near enough to be considered an obscene kind of comfort, and far enough not to cause undue alarm. And why?

_Don’t leave me alone in the dark, I can’t take it._

I remembered saying those words before passing out. And Ibiki had not left me alone. Relief flooded me, not just because I hadn’t been consigned to losing the last grasps I had on my mind, but because this was final proof.

I _hadn’t_ told Ibiki everything.

If I had, I would have been left in a normal cell, alone. The fact he was with me, giving me the comfort I’d begged for, showed he was still practicing the way of kindness with me. He still wanted something from me.

I sagged. I hadn’t even known I was stiff but understanding I hadn’t told made me fall into limp bonelessness. Silent, hot, thick tears ran out of my eyes. I hadn’t told.

_Still safe. Still safe…_

The sense of relief was brief, though. I couldn’t hold out much longer and I knew it. I was unraveling. The man asleep and breathing soft inhales across the narrow cell was finding my every frayed thread and pulling. There wouldn’t be much left soon. I would tell. I would break. And it wouldn’t take much to do it. A hand. A touch. A needle full of drugs. I was so tired in so many ways… I would tell if pushed just a little in the right direction.

Unless I found a way not to.

A way…

I moved my head slightly and felt the drag there, against my neck.

The _chakra_ collar I wore had also been connected to a rope leading to the head of the bed. Slack, but not _too_ slack. Yet another means of saying I shouldn’t get any ideas with Ibiki in the room. I should stay quiet and rest.

A fool’s notion.

Whoever had arranged my bonds hadn’t considered the ideas of the dead were different than those of the living. We did not fear the same. What would terrify some only left us melancholy.

The _Konoha_ - _nin_ had fixed the rope joining my collar to the rail at the head of the cot in the place of the _chakra_ lock, allowing the collar to slip a little looser if I didn’t move much and tighter if I should happen to get _ideas_. A fortunate thing.

There were two ways to choke a person. My brother had taught me each with efficiency on what I remembered as my fifth birthday, and I remembered the methods, the knowledge joining that of medical _ninjutsu_ Kazue had instructed me in. One way was to cut off air to the brain by constricting the trachea. The other way was by pinching shut the jugular veins and preventing blood from reaching the brain. The restriction of air was flashier, slower, more painful. Effective if the one administering the choke wanted to induce fear as much as discomfort. It was also more dangerous because a hard or careless choke could break the hyoid bone in the neck. I had intimate experience with air chokes thanks to Sakumo and I didn’t relish the memories. Pinching off the jugular veins, on the other hand, was more effective if the one preforming the choke simply wanted to kill and kill fast. If blood flow was completely cut off, death could occur in as little as twenty seconds, with unconsciousness striking even sooner. It was not a bad way to die, I supposed.

With the thought, I shut my eyes and shifted forward slightly, letting the collar tighten on me. Only to pause, settling back with my eyes drifting open. My fingers twitched, a pained expression crossing my face when my gaze came to rest on Ibiki. He remained as he’d been on my waking. Sleeping with his head hanging. As if he’d been sitting and waiting for me to get up but had been overtaken by his own weariness first.

A strange, stuttering of unreasonable guilt stole over me. In what little remained of my memory of our previous encounter, I recalled admitting to the man I did not hate him. Despite the fact he was ripping me apart I… didn’t hold it against him. It had been different with Sakumo. I _did_ hate him. Had hated him from the first. But the two torturers were not the same. Ibiki Morino was a man doing his job. Doing it well but taking no particular pleasure in it. Sakumo Ishida, on the other hand, had been a man who enjoyed his job. And the difference between the two of them left me laying still, almost sorry. As if my escape were some form of betrayal.

My gaze flickered away from the man and back again. Nervous and restless, too much so to settle or catch on any one thing. Any single detail. The dark of his hair, the white ridges of his scars tearing down his face. How had he gotten those? What, or who, had tried to wreck this man? In his sleep, the band of his _Hitai-ate_ had slipped, twisted to one side, revealing the continuations of those old wounds up over his scalp. It was abundantly clear the thick cords of ruined skin were not accidental.

And they connected him to me. Bond me to him as only the mutual understanding of inflicted pain could.

_What was this man doing to me?_

He was killing me. Killing me with his way of kindness. I was going to lose. And- And…

A breath escaped out my lips. The prelude to a sob I cut off. Cut clean. My eyes opened with reluctance, even as my breathing picked up, heart stuttering in my chest. I didn’t have to move much to tighten the collar. Just a bare few millimeters and the thing clamped down around my neck, a smooth, supple pressure wrapping my skin. All I had to do was curl my head down toward my chest and forward and strain on the rope, the leather did the rest. The high, upper rim of the collar digging into just the right places on the sides of my throat. What was important was the will to continue, to strain against all instinct to fall back, release the pressure, give up the attempt, _live_! Killing yourself was far harder than most would expect. Even those who wished for death the most found it difficult to defeat the body’s natural will to live. But a blood choke was quick. Apply the force right and you didn’t have long to think about it or second guess. To regret or to change your mind.

Seconds.

Less than twenty seconds.

They ticked away in my mind, as it went dark, my vision fuzzing around the edges and browning out. Narrowing to a hollow tunnel.

I might have been a second from black out, maybe two, certainly not more, when a hand tangled in my cropped hair and jerked my head back. A strangled breath went down my throat. I just hung there, dazed-eyed and sucking at the air thoughtlessly, but Ibiki was not placid, not probing and removed, as he maintained his demeaner in the interrogation room. His hand and arm were shaking, and his voice was a roar.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

The words vibrated through my skull, but I could do nothing with them. My head felt packed and leaden and empty all at once, and wet was leaking out of my eyes, one thought pounding through me on my heartbeat. _Messed up._ I’d messed up. Messed up so bad.

My daze and near unconsciousness lasted some time. I held little memory of how I got from the cell to the chair in the interrogation room but clasped little fragments in my hands like glass shards. Brittle and painful. ANBU with rough hands disconnecting me from the ropes and locking the _chakra_ collar on a loose notch, hauling me, depositing me none too gently into the chair, where I slumped with Morino hovering over me. Insuring I did nothing but sit, slow tears drawing lines down my face.

I didn’t even want to move, and it was just as well. My interrogator never altered his position. He just stood over me, his _chakra_ flaring, burning and bubbling out in angry waves and bursts. Whipping around me and sizzling along my skin. It made the hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck stand on end. It would have been horrifying if I hadn’t been used to wild _chakras_ and battlefields and _shinobi_ and killing intent. I’d understood the feeling of the intent to kill since I was a small child standing and watching my father at work from behind a doorframe, my thumb in my mouth and head cocked to the side, and Ibiki’s _chakra_ was bare of killing intent or hostility. What it held was mere, undirected _anger_. The man was irate I’d almost managed to eradicate myself under his watch.

And half laying there, immersed in his billowing life energy, I supposed I could understand his sentiment. He’d almost lost valued information.

Strangely though, his thorough rage was easing to me, as was his constant, silent, steady presence above me. He wasn’t _doing_ anything, and neither were any of the ANBU flanking the door. He was just… there. Standing guard over me. Protecting me. If only from myself. Even if his crackling _chakra_ danced on my skin and snapped in the tears coursing slow down my face, I could feel nothing but numb. No one was getting through Ibiki to harm me, and for the first time since Sakumo, I felt safe. No one was going to touch me but the man above me, and he… he was pissed off I’d tried to end myself. He wanted me alive.

The fact of it and the fact he was ultimately killing me only added to my hollowness and apathy. I was so done, so thoroughly exhausted and at an end and twisted between the conflicting feelings of safety and resignation, I almost fell asleep. Or, dropped into unconsciousness. It made no matter either way. The door crashing open jerked me awake, but I was still too dejected and apathetic to cry out or even whimper. I just kept weeping softly, blinking past the prisms in my eyes, to see the person who swept in like a _kami_ on the wind.

She was tall and her medical- _nin_ uniform hugged a frame that was powerful in its own right. The way she glided in and moved that lither form said she likely had skill in _taijutsu_ as well as medical _ninjutsu_. Her eyes sparked, taking in the ANBU, Morino, and myself in one glance. Snorting something like indignation, she snapped, “I think we’ve had enough of that, Ibiki. Turn off your _chakra_ , or I’ll make you leave the room.”

The sultry and testy roll of her voice reminded me of singers Kazue had taken me to see in _Sunagakure_ two years before his death. And it closed my interrogator’s vent of anger off like a valve turned. His _chakra_ was locked behind his barriers and his normal, low, even tone came out when he spoke. “Suru.”

She breezed over the floor, paying Ibiki hardly any mind, green-gray eyes flashing. “I was told you had an attempted suicide. I don’t need you to finish the job by frightening him to death.”

The rebuke pulled a strangled sound from me that wanted to be hysterical laughter, but which was more hitching sob. The sharpness in her eyes softened when she heard it, and she squatted down beside me, those glass and smoke orbs of hers sweeping over my shivering body and noting the uniform I wore. “My name’s Rai. Rai Suru,” she said soft. “I’m going to take care of you-”

“Ko,” Ibiki offered. “His name is Ko.”

“Ko.” Rai smiled at me, a gentle thing, almost sad. Then she sighed. “Now… Where are you hurt? If it was anything severe, they would have transported you to the Hospital.”

“He tried to choke himself.” Morino’s voice was again laced with the outrage I’d heard in the cell. “He used his _chakra_ sealing collar.”

Something pained crossed Rai’s eyes. “Alright.” To me, raising her hands and letting a light-green glow gather around them. “I’m going to examine your neck, Ko.”

I shut my eyes and did nothing to stop her, even angling my head to give her better access to the area she wanted. The warmth of her _chakra_ slipped into me, unwanted but not unkind. Intent. Like the whole set of the woman.

“How badly is he injured?” Ibiki asked after a moment of this silent investigation, voice again neutral.

“He isn’t much,” Rai returned, the feel of her _chakra_ deepening, changing from searching to healing. “Nothing’s broken, just bruised. He knew what he was doing. He’s a medical- _nin_.”

The gentleness and regretful understanding in those words had me opening my eyes, as she dropped her hands. She was close to me, but she hadn’t had to touch me, just hold her hands to either side of my throat. It was a relief to be unmolested and to have her life energy removed from me, but, finished with her work, she leaned just a little nearer me. “Is it he?” she almost whispered.

The simple question left me blinking and wanting to cry for a new reason. A half weary, almost-pain lodged under my rib \cage. “I’m they, them.” The words were a rasp and not because there was anything wrong with my throat any longer.

She offered me another smile, and a wink Ibiki couldn’t see. “I’m she, her.”

And, despite myself, despite everything, I found myself returning Rai’s smile. Offering her a wan, watery thing. A stretch of the lips that felt out of place on my features because I couldn’t remember when I’d smiled last. But she was a medical- _nin_ , and _Iyrō-nin_ took care of their own, even if it could be in nothing more than a small trust, a slight, slim sliver of comradery and mutual understanding. Even the _Ishi_ medics had tried to be kind to me, in their way, but I’d wanted nothing of it and snarled at them when they came too close. Taking only space and gentle indifference from them when they pressed me.

Yet, what little I gave this _Konoha_ medic seemed to be enough for her. “Are there any other injuries I can take care of for you, Ko? Just think of me as your personal physician.”

With her watching me it was harder to cry, somehow. I pressed my hands to my face, to hide and to deal with the mess there. “No. No, I’m alright.” It was trembling, but it came out.

And Ibiki contradicted it almost at once. “He’s complained his left arm is in pain.”

Surprise made me jerk and turn my face up to the man. I could feel it paling, even as my right hand crept to grip my left wrist. I _had_ said that. “It’s nothing. An old injury.” This came out strained.

Rai appeared to sense my anxiety. Her tone was soothing. Comforting. So very medical- _nin_. “I can still take a look at it for you, Ko. And anything else that might be hurting you.”

“He also said one of the _Ishi shinobi_ holding him captive, before our ANBU found him, hit him in the stomach.”

My head snapped up to Morino for the second time, and I felt I wanted to cry. Why was he doing this? It wasn’t in effort to humiliate me. Even while he took me apart bit by bit, the man had consistently maintained a kind of decorum. Degradation did not seem a tactic he employed. This… this was almost worse. The calm in his gaze and the flatness in his statements spoke of something more painful. It was like he was taking responsibility for my wellbeing. Trying to ensure I was cared for.

And it put another dagger through my heart, to twist right beside his way of kindness. He had taken the fact I did not hate him and turned it on me. It was difficult to resist kindness when in pain, and even more so to not _want_ to give in to someone who proved they actually _cared_.

He was ruining me.

I felt my face crumble, looking at him, and I covered it with my hands again. My fingers did nothing to hold back the tears, though. They slipped and oozed through the slender digits, hot and bitter. Laced with years of anguish.

It was Rai’s voice that reached for me, moved to ease my pain. “It’s alright, Ko. I’m here to help you, and everything will be okay.”

Her hand settled on my shoulder, attempting to offer support, and I twitched away from it, letting out a garbled cry. “No. Please, no.”

“He doesn’t like to be touched,” Ibiki advised.

This made me whine, wishing he’d _stop_ , and I hunched over my knees.

“I’m sorry,” Rai said, gentle. “I won’t touch you again, Ko. Not without asking. Will you forgive me?”

Manic laughter came out of me and I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, as if that would stop the liquid leaking out of me. “Of course, I do. What choice do I have?” It was mean, but I was aching and had no means to fight back, no one to strike at but those near me.

The woman was silent beside me for a little, absorbing my statement. “Thank you,” she said at last. “I think you’re a good person, Ko.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” I sobbed. Her words hurt now, too, and I attempted to curl myself into a tight ball. Away from my fellow medical- _nin_ and Ibiki both.

Yet, I could feel the wright of her duo colored eyes on me. Her quiet evaluation. “Do you know, Ko, how we see ourselves is only one version of who we are. It isn’t the whole of us. Sometimes, others see things in us we don’t see about ourselves. I don’t know you well, but I’ve talked to you a little, and I see you.”

A high, hysterical laugh did come out of me then. “Why does everyone here sound like Kazue?!”

“Kazue?”

“His mentor,” Ibiki supplied when I refused to answer.

“Oh, I see.” To me. “Maybe we all sound alike because we know what we’re saying, Ko.” She paused. Let me absorb this time and cry a little more. Then, “Can I have a look at you, Ko? Please.”

I sat and shuddered and cried awhile longer, but I gave in. There was little other choice. Ibiki could force the matter if he really wanted to, and offering kindness or not, allowing me the dignity of being asked or not, Rai was still not my friend. “Alright,” I managed. “You can.”

“Thank you, Ko,” she said again. “Do you need some help with your shirt?”

“I can do it.” I tried, I really did, but it was hard. I hated undressing in front of others. Despised baring my flesh, and Rai still had to catch the slipping fabric of my shirt when I was able to get it over my head but could not seem to get it onto the table. Then I still had to peel off my undershirt and allow myself to sit there, shivering. Oh, so vulnerable.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck.”

The light words were breathy and more than startled. And why shouldn’t they be? I knew what Rai was seeing. My skin was not a pretty thing anymore. The stains of drying bruises painted my left side, low down, near the sagging ride of my too-loose waistband, and lighter, older, across the right side of my ribcage. Purple and blue and black, blotched with yellow as they faded, it was clear the things were intentional and had been applied with unforgiving force. But these recent discomforts paled beside the signs of older indecencies. Most of what had once been smooth skin was marred in some fashion. My back was a cris-crossed nest of ridges and furrows. Scourge marks, long since healed, but still itching and tender in my imagination. My chest and torso were spotted and smeared with haphazard discolorations and patchy blotches. The remains of brands and acid burns.

No, my skin was unlovely, and I was familiar with the fact. Could still feel the application of each, singular marking to my person. I _understood_ her reaction.

But the disrepair of my hide wasn’t the reason the notion of undressing left me shaking and wishing to whimper under Ibiki’s eyes. _That_ reason was more personal, deeper intwined with my grasp of self.

The abundance of defacements on the front of me almost masked the twin, upward-facing, crescent-shaped scars on my chest. Almost, but not quite. Those scars were deep and white and distinct and different from the rest. Clearly medical in nature, if anyone took the time to note it.

And Ibiki was the kind to note everything. The knowledge pushed me to feel the old desire to cross my arms over my chest. To hide in disgusting modesty. To hold onto a part of myself the man had no business with. Rai would know what those scars were, I knew, but I did not want Ibiki to see. The man had already uncovered too much of me. Ripped away layers inside me, to touch places I did not want disturbed. He did not need this, too, he did not need to see down to the most intimate parts of me.

So, I wrapped myself in my arms and hunched forward because I hated this. Hated that scars were records written on flesh you couldn’t hide, and skin told tales, which weren’t always true.

I was weeping pitiably when Rai’s voice broke my misery. “Fuck! Fucking hell, why the fuck is it like this?!” Her ire and fluent profanity had me raising my head, taken with her change in demeanor. She meant my skin, why was my skin as it was, and part of me would have tried to formulate an answer for her, but she rolled on past her inquiry before I could bother with the thing. “You know what, fuck it, I don’t want to know.”

From soft and assuring to brusque and biting. The shift would have worried me if I hadn’t understood it. She was _Yōkai-nin_ , after all. That’d been clear the moment she walked in the door. It was obvious she was on familiar terms with Ibiki and this was not her first interrogation. She knew why my skin was the way it was without having to be told the particulars, and her change in attitude was only recognition of us both for what we were.

The drop of her bedside manner pushed a shudder through me, and I found myself glancing away, left hand flexing, flexing, looking for sensation that wasn’t there.

A disconnect sparked in my head and dissociation took me for a few minutes, but Rai’s voice called me from it, nudged my mind back into the room and reality. “I want to have a look at your arm, Ko.” The slow drag of my eyes up to her face was painful and the red, liquid shine of them seemed to soften her, to make her add, “Is that alright? Can I do that, Ko?”

“Yes.” The hiccupping sob was all I could manage, but she took it, turning her attention to the limb in question.

Though the bruising on my chest and torso was fresher, it didn’t surprise me she went to the shoulder and arm first. Some of the worst of the scaring was there. A long, arching seam of fused flesh curved over the ball of the shoulder, down, under the arm, and up again on the other side in an uneven, meandering circle. The join was badly done, hurriedly executed, and the skin to either side puckered and tight. Years old, it still called for notice above other injuries.

Rai reached for me, reached to make contact with my hand, and held back. “Can I touch you, Ko?”

Another courtesy, another attempt to make me feel I had a choice. I pressed my right hand over my face and moaned, “Yes.”

She waited for me to open my watering eyes and acknowledge her before taking my hand in her fingers. Her thumb rested in my palm and her index finger curled against the back of my hand. I could see she applied gentle pressure by the tense in her arm but gave no response.

“Can you feel this, Ko?” she asked, creases appearing at the corners of her eyes, as her lips turned down.

I took in a shuddering breath and closed my eyes. “No.”

“No sensation in the hand,” she noted, tone acid, grip moving up my wrist, to my arm. “Tell me when you do feel me, Ko.”

I didn’t stop her, until she reached my elbow and the pressure of her hold registered faintly on my nerves, eliciting me to hiss in through my teeth, squeezing my eyes tighter shut and pressing away from her and into the chair’s backrest.

“No feeling up to the elbow,” she snapped at my reaction, ire sneaking back into her voice, as she let go of my arm and began dancing her fingers over my shoulder and the rim of scar there, instead. The contact was like stings on my mind, pushing me into a series of shallow, rapid breaths, like desperate pants, my eyes opening and unfocusing, dilating, while my nails dug into my right palm in my effort not to move. She noticed this, as well, and eased off her physical examination, switching to a _chakra_ search, even as she murmured, “I’m sorry for the discomfort, Ko. Thank you for trusting me.”

Attempt at kindness or not, the brittleness in her voice hadn’t eased, and I wasn’t comforted. Nothing, I could do nothing but sit there and let this woman I hardly knew invade me with crackling, ozone-tinted energy. She had an electrical affinity. I cataloged the fact absently, even as I sobbed in a distant way, in some reality I couldn’t seem to grasp well any longer. Rai didn’t _mean_ for her _chakra_ to jitter and fuzz under my skin the way it did. Didn’t _mean_ to make me feel small and violated under her hands or to set my heartrate into a wild trot, she simply _couldn’t help it_.

I knew it, I understood it, but that didn’t keep me from wanting to scream, and I whined out a sound of relief when she withdrew her probes from my tissues. Whined and turned my face away to sob more freely into a hand where she couldn’t see. Why I should care if she saw or not, I didn’t know, but somehow, I did, I _did_ care.

At the least, Rai seemed too preoccupied to notice or mind the fact.

“Oh, Ko,” she exhaled. “This… This… What the fuck happened to this?!”

Something came out of me, an articulation that wanted to be a laugh, but which was more garbled weeping than anything else. “It was removed.”

There was a weighted pause, an intensity of sizzling _chakra_ she couldn’t contain that came and went with the turn of her emotions. “What?”

I bent forward, until the hand covering my face rested on my knees. The fingers of my left hand twitched, twitched again, memory swimming up to drown me. “The arm. It was… re… moved.”

“By what, a butcher?!” Her tone said if she ever got her hands on the one responsible, she would show them what it meant to lose body parts, and wasn’t that a strange thing from a medical- _nin_? Most would think so. There were two things I’d noticed always surprised people. Just how many organs they could live without when the person removing them knew what they were doing, and how medical- _nin_ , those kind and comforting creatures in formless white, could be the most heinous and horrifying stuff of nightmares, if pushed too far the wrong way, fractured along that particular fault line. _Yōkai-nin_ , those medical- _nin_ who found it their responsibility to shed blood, as much as it was to heal, came close to this unrepentant state, but still retained certain sensibilities with their fellow, less tainted, brethren. The desires to help and heal among them. Rai was _Yōkai-nin_. I had little doubt she would gladly slice off a few fingers if she found it necessary, but, more than anything, I knew her anger was there because she wished to heal. She _wanted_ to help.

Still, the knowledge didn’t change the fact the outburst made my whole frame jerk. A shiver ran down my spine and, amazingly, or, perhaps not, Ibiki was the one to come to my rescue. “Let it go, Suru,” he said, tone neutral and dry. “You can read it in his file.”

It was Rai’s turn to hiss air through her teeth, but she didn’t argue. She just switched back to the medical technicalities, her voice gentling, or at least trying. “Can you tell me how it was reattached, Ko? It obviously wasn’t done well. The bone and blood flow were adequately mended, but the numbness… I’m not sure I can repair it, at this point.”

“I did it.” It hurt to say, and it came out of an aching throat, constricted from crying. “Didn’t have time to think.”

“You… did it.” Rai’s words were light, but I could tell she was grinding her teeth. “A one-armed surgery.”

“I did the best I could.” With a heaving sob, I dashed the tears off my face and sat back, face tilted toward the ceiling. “I didn’t have the energy to get everything right.”

“Like the nerve connections.”

A low moan was my affirmative because this hurt, too. “I was in the habit of stimulating the nerves with _chakra_ to facilitate feeling in the arm and hand, but I haven’t been able to…”

“Because of the _chakra_ collar,” she finished. Then she chewed her lip before going on. “Even with the hurried circumstances of the reattachment, there isn’t any physical reason the shoulder and arm should still be in pain. All I can think is you’re experiencing phantom pains from the initial trauma of its removal. I can’t do anything to fix that, but I can relieve the numbness, if you’ll let me, Ko.”

“Yes.”

I’d wiped the tears away, but I felt them oozing out the corners of my eyes again. Hot and visceral. I was too tired to do anything about them and let them slide down my cheeks. Rai’s hands applying _chakra_ to my arm only made it worse, made it harder to control myself and my weeping, but at least a tingling swell of _feeling_ spread down the limb she held, following the trial of her glowing fingers. I moaned at it, the suddenness of it almost painful after so long without the ability to sense my own body part. It was so much a shock to my system, when Rai was done, I had to bring the hand up and stare at it from out watering eyes for several moments before I would or could believe the thing was _mine_.

“How’s that, Ko?”

All I could do was nod and cradle my left hand in my right. How was it? It was better. It was _alive_. But I wasn’t. Truthfully, I just wanted to sleep. Sleep for years, and maybe not wake up. My eyes slipped closed and I sat like that, breathing softly, damp-cheeked and exhausted.

They let me have the time, likely both sensing I needed it. Neither spoke or moved, Ibiki remaining sentinel, after all the time that’d passed, and Rai staying by me. Were they comforting? Or horrifying? It made no matter. They were steadying. In minutes, with effort, my eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, Ko,” Rai greeted me, as if I’d been away. “Are you doing okay? I’d like to check your other injuries. Can I do that, Ko?”

Truth be told, I was running out of energy. The memories and emotion connected to my arm had left me hollowed out and dazed. Though I still did not want her touching me, I felt no capability to resist or delay. I just sniffed in attempt to clear my nose, and gave in. “Yes.”

She went for my ribs first, maybe fearing the worse wound was there. Her fingers pressed and investigated, then her _chakra_ moved beneath my skin and through my ribs. It made me squirm and feel sick.

“Was this a fracture or just bruising, Ko?” she asked, at last.

“A fracture.”

There was a firmer pressure on my chest a moment, the result of a probing line of _chakra_ through the place where I’d remedied the bone, then she withdrew. “You healed the break and left the bruising.”

“I had more pressing matters to attend to.” It wasn’t choked so much as just strained. After days of weeping and screaming, my voice was finally going hoarse of its own accord.

And almost as if to render my effort null, Ibiki again contradicted me as soon as the words were out. “He said the _Ishi_ ANBU holding him didn’t like it when he tended to himself.”

My gaze didn’t snap up to him this time, anymore than it slowly dragged to his face. Hurting and tired, I simply found myself turning to him normally, pain etched in lines on my features. “Stop. Please, just stop.” The words were out before I could think and my fingers went to my lips, surprised I’d said them with such calm.

Morino watched me, perhaps surprised as well, but not showing it. The only hint to emotion on his face that thing moving under his scar. And what was he thinking? What was he seeing in me, as I turned away and let my head drop into a hand? How close I was to losing it? The fact my attempt at death had been my final, and now the medical examination had been as effective as any form of physical torture he could have employed? All of it? None of it? More than that?

“It’s alright, Ko,” Rai said softly. “May I heal your side?”

“Do it, just do it.”

She was quiet while she finished, erasing the dark patches of bruising from my skin, and only speaking again when she dropped her hands. “Are there any other injuries you need healed, Ko? Things I can’t see?”

Suddenly further horrified, I clasped my hands together behind my neck and tucked my head down to my legs. “No!”

Gently, half afraid to frighten me more, “I can have Ibiki leave the room.”

“No! There’s nothing else! Please!” The idea of completely undressing and having more hands on me almost tossed me into a panic like what had caused me to claw at the cuff on my wrist when Ibiki had first asked about Sakumo. I couldn’t have handled it, and truly, it wasn’t needed. I had been blessed in one thing, there were some lines Sakumo and the _Ishi_ had never crossed, some forms of _convincing_ and _persuasion_ they had never found it necessary to use.

And Rai must have believed me, or believed she’d hit a point where she couldn’t press anymore, because she relented. “Alright, Ko. Do you need some help getting dressed?”

“I can do it, I can.” Dressing was easier than undressing had been, and I scrambled to do it, hiding myself away in layers of white, again. When it was done, I sat panting, waiting for my heartrate to still.

It was Rai who watched me now, sad and regretful for a reason I didn’t care to think about but couldn’t get away from. She stayed crouched beside me a bit longer, then she stood and took a position on the opposite side of the table from Ibiki. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, Ko, but things will be alright. I’ll be here to watch out for you.”

Confusion ran a race up my spine with something like understanding and dreadful resignation. “What?”

It was Ibiki who answered. “Standard procedure dictates in cases of attempted suicide, a medical- _nin_ is required to be present for the remainder of the interrogation.”

My face paled several shades and more regret seemed to bubble out of Rai. Almost unthinking, her hands came together and flashed out an _Iyrō-nin_ sign.

_I’m sorry._

I should not have been forgiving, should not have wanted to care or make her feel less guilt, but I didn’t want to see the things gathering on her face. I wanted to wipe them away. “It’s alright,” I forced out. “I understand. I’m _Yōkai-nin_ , too. They had me doing the same thing as you in the _Ishi_ Intelligence Division.”

Rai started and Ibiki’s dark eyes flickered between the two of us. “What did you do, Suru? And what does _Yōkai-nin_ mean?”

She glanced at him and back to me. “I told them I was sorry in medical- _nin_ hand signals. And Ko told me they understand why I’m here and not to be sorry because… because we’re both _Yōkai_ , medical- _nin_ who run with ANBU and other elite _shinobi_ and are willing to do things most medical- _nin_ won’t.”

Ibiki’s eyes settled on me and that was the last of me. The final nudge into loss and devastation because I couldn’t hold back anymore, and he was going to ask me, and Rai would not help. Couldn’t. Whether she wanted to or not. The tears came automatically, and I put my head down on the table and curled my arms around it, weeping unrestrainedly. “Kill me, just kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Ko,” Ibiki assured, as he had so often before. “All I want is for you to tell me where the _Ishi_ are on our borders.”

“Please, no,” I begged. “Please. They’ll die. They’ll all die, don’t you understand that?”

There was a short and hanging silence before Morino spoke. “Who, Ko? Who’ll die? Help me understand.”

“My children!” I screamed it. Screamed it so hard my back arched and tensed. Then I slumped back onto the table, choking. Not because the collar was held on that almost-too-tight notch any longer, but simply because I’d expelled all my air and shrieked the thing so loud it felt my throat had torn. And laying there, tasting copper in the back of my mouth, panting and gasping, struggling to breathe, I could feel the change in the room.

Stillness held the space in a hold broken only by my agonized sounds, and I could feel the creep of my interrogator’s _chakra_ snaking out from his control, as if I’d startled even the calm serenity of Ibiki Morino.

I had certainly hit Rai somewhere unexpected. “Oh, _kami_ ,” she breathed out after a few heartbeats that lagged heavy through my chest. And why? Why shouldn’t that have been her reaction? I was young to have even one child, much less the multiple I had implied, and that left only less-savory options for a statement no one seemed to doubt.

“Children,” Ibiki murmured.

“Please, they’ll die.” I sobbed it and I didn’t care, and despite the obscurity of everything I said, it didn’t take Morino long to decipher the situation. To take it apart the way he dismantled me.

“You weren’t the only war orphan the _Ishi_ took from _Ame_ , were you, Ko?” This was spoken soft. “There were so many wandering the Land of Rain, a few score disappearing wouldn’t even be noticed. The _Ishi_ took any kid they could find who showed promise and forced them into use as medical- _nin_. That’s how it was, wasn’t it, Ko? I need you to tell me if that’s how things were.”

“Sometimes it pays to be good at singing lullabies.” I couldn’t have stopped the words if I’d tried. They were bitter. Bitter with all the nights my songs were the only things keeping young lives from shattering. I wanted to hold back, wanted to resist, but I was past that and all I had was pleading. “I was the oldest, I protected them. Please, I can’t send _Konoha shinobi_ to kill them.”

Ibiki did not respond in a manner I would have expected. I anticipated questioning, the threat of him coming closer and extending a hand to touch me. All I received was his quiet voice. “Have you considered, Ko, that you might not be thinking clearly? You’re still trying to protect them, but what do you think is worse, leaving your children in the hands of the _Ishi_ , or risking their retrieval at our hands?”

“Retrieval?” The word shook me. I lifted my head and felt myself swaying, almost falling, despite the fact I was sitting. “Retrieval. I- What?”

“Ko,” Rai interjected, voice taunt, “you’re telling us the _Ishi_ are holding a group of civilian children, _young_ children, captive and pressing them into military service. It isn’t _Konoha_ practice to just launch an assault on where prisoners of war are being held, in disregard of their lives. What would happen would be a recovery mission, a rescue, as well as an infiltration.”

My eyes flickered between them like the fearful, feral glance of a wounded animal before two predators. “I don’t- I-” I couldn’t speak coherent words. _Was_ I thinking clearly? _Had_ I had an unclouded thought since Sakumo? He had used my precious ones against me, took them into his rooms and told me he would break them if I didn’t cooperate, if we _all_ didn’t behave. With threat and pain, he’d twisted me, unwound me, until my world, _my whole being_ had narrowed to _protect them_ , do _anything_ to keep them from _getting hurt_. _Anything._ And I had. I had. I’d been doing that on my own so long, with no inkling of there being another choice, I hadn’t even considered _help_. Hadn’t imagined-

“Stop it! Stop it!” I was gripping my hair and shaking my head back and forth. Trying to clear it. Failing. “Don’t. I don’t understand.”

“Ko,” Morino’s tone was clam, easy, breaking me into a thousand pieces with every word, “the _Hokage_ isn’t a man taken to leaving children to die. We need the _Ishi_ off our borders but finding your children would also be a priority. Both because they’re hostages, and because getting them out of _Ishi_ hands will weaken the Land of Rock’s position on the frontlines.”

My world canted, slipping out of true, to smash down around me. All I could do was keep shaking my head over and over again, shaking it like a dog with a tick in its ear. “No. I- Please. Please. I- Morino- _san_.” I didn’t even know what I was begging for, maybe just that they’d _stop_. Stop wrecking what was left of my reality. But they didn’t, and it was Rai who delivered the final blow.

“Ko, you don’t have to do this alone, anymore. You don’t have to carry their lives all on your own. We can help each other. Let us help you.”

“Stop. Just stop.” I said it, sobbing again, head sinking back to the table, where I let the tears fall and the crying have me.

“Ko,” Ibiki said after a moment, but I cut off whatever else he wanted to say.

“There are twenty.”

The statement seemed to freeze him. His dark, intent eyes held me where I lay weeping. “Twenty what, Ko?”

“My children. There are twenty others, besides me.” I shut my eyes then, to hide from what I was going to do and from Ibiki, as well. I couldn’t take seeing his face, while I gave him what he wanted. Couldn’t.

I had no notion of the geography of the Land of Fire, knew nothing of where the frontlines fell on the borders, or the names of the places I’d been, but I held a great grasp of landmarks and topographical features, and described them in exacting detail, the way my father had taught me to recite my lessons when I was young, to the point I was sure Ibiki was glad his assisting ANBU always had recording equipment in place. I’d been dragged across tracks of land, leagues between one place and another so often, it was easy to explain _Ishi_ movements and the locations of their footholds. Including the one my children were being kept in. I laid it all out, word after word, until I had nothing left. Not tears, not secrets, not a shred of myself.

When everything ran out, ran dry, I just lay there. Spent. Breathing.

Ibiki and Rai were silent, absorbing everything I’d said, I was sure. Ibiki shook himself free first. “Thank you, Ko,” he said, at last.

I flinched. “Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that.” Without raising my head, I angled it toward him, pain etched on every line of my face, and I dry sobbed, “Don’t let them die. Don’t make me regret this.”

That twitch moved under his scar, and Ibiki’s face turned stony, distant, but weirdly not angry. It should have been. _Some_ pique _should_ have registered because what I’d said was no longer pleading, no longer begging, it was _threat_ and he knew it, and he took it seriously, despite the fact I had no way of fulfilling it.

 _Don’t make me regret this, or_ you’ll _regret._

I saw it flicker in his eyes, the shared understanding. Yet, “Alright, Ko,” was all he said. Then, “I’ll be sure you’re moved to a more comfortable cell. Somewhere you can relax.”

“Everything will be alright, Ko,” Rai added, soothing. “I’ll be with you.”

My eyes shifted to her, slow and tired. She saw the deadness there and pain crossed her face, but she still offered me a wan smile. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone, now did you?”

In truth, I didn’t care if I was alone. They’d taken everything away with their kindness and the possibility of safety for my precious ones. What little I’d had left of myself had just broke. I was dead. Dead again, for the fourth time, and I just wanted nothing.


	5. Konoha Blues, Part One

**Jet Black** : **“** When you and I first met, you told me something. You said that you had died once, that you had seen death. Why can't you just let it go? Forget the past.”

**Cowboy Bebop, The Real Folk Blues Part One**

Ibiki kept his word. I was returned to the cell I’d woken in, but only for a few, short hours I hardly noticed passing. Then I was moved to a cell block in another part of the Intelligence Division altogether. Placed in a warm cell with a comfortable bed and soft blankets. A cell with one wall comprised of bars, so I could see out into the corridor, and a barred window high up on another wall, which let in the sun and the outside air. A quiet place. A restful place. One with the feeling of lightness about it, despite the stone and steel, and a place filled only by the gentle rumble of the guards in their area, discreetly speaking out of sight, and the intermittent rustle of my fellow prisoners in their places of internment. It was a place I would not be alone, even when alone.

And I was seldom alone, because Rai kept her word as well. She sat with me in the cell Ibiki and I had shared for a short time, then walked beside me to my new place of repose, so she could be sure I was settled properly, and not in danger of further stupidity, before leaving me to myself. And, even when she had gone, it wasn’t for long. She came back the next day, and the next, and all the other days thereafter. I didn’t know why. I was not good company. But she would stay with me every time, for hours on end. Talking to me, attempting to get me to eat, simply sitting near me, so I wouldn’t be by myself, looking after me, seeing to my health.

This was probably just as well. There was little left in me to care for what became of the person I was. I seldom spoke or otherwise made sounds, unless prompted, did not eat, unless urged, rarely moved, except when encouraged. When Rai was not there, I simply lay and slept and slept still more. Exhausted. But more, merely unwilling to wake.

I had no heart to _be awake_.

I could tell Rai was worried, but I still did little to reassure her, beyond eating when asked, and, on occasion murmuring, a reply to her inquires as to my body and mind.

Broken. I was broken and… and couldn’t find a way back to the surface of the water I was sinking in. I’d died so many times, would have just given in and lost myself after Kazue’s death and my capture if it weren’t for my children. They had been there with me. Kept me alive. As the _nin_ dragged me kicking and screaming with Kazue’s blood still on my hands, while we were terrorized through a forced march from _Ame_ to _Ishi_ , in the entirety of Sakumo’s depravations. My children had held me in life. I had needed to watch out for them. But when I had broken to Ibiki, _died_ to him, I’d relieved myself of their safety, let go of the responsibility for their wellbeing. Now… what did I have? What to draw me to another attempt at life.

Nothing.

I had nothing.

Except…

_Rai._

She kept coming back, day after unrewarding day. Continued smiling at me and enticing me in little ways to respond, to sit up, to come back to life. Yet again. I did not want to…

Yet.

It was easier to sleep deeply with Rai present. Though I dozed and fretted in light sleep near constantly, I found I could only fall into true sleep when she was with me. _Why?_ I wondered the question as often as I thought anything. Why did it matter to me Rai was near if I had no desire for life? The answer was not one I appreciated. It mattered because I still hoped. In some deep, insentient part of me, I still hoped Ibiki and Rai herself had been telling me the truth. Harbored hope for my children’s lives. And with that hope… I found Rai a comfort. Her steady and dependable presence was a solid thing in the daze of my existence. A thing to anchor me in reality.

But neither hope nor comfort were enough to rouse me. Both were external to me. Things I could not control or claim as mine. Could do nothing about. I needed a reason within myself to come back to life. Something that was my own. Even a small thing…

Rai provided it, of course. Subtly. Without pressure or pretense. Undeniably purposefully, but carefully. As if not to startle me. As if I were still considered a wounded, wild animal she needed to coax into trust. Or risk being bitten.

She was probably right. I would have resented an outright approach. Would have resisted. But her subtly did not register on me, until I’d woken slightly, and by then, I did not wish to turn back to apathy.

Though, perhaps I still should have known from the beginning what she was about. It was fairly obvious. On one of her visits, I was sleeping, curled in on myself and encasing a pillow I held to my chest, blankets draped over me, hugging my contours. Rai had gotten me to eat, but then I’d stopped responding, craving the dreamless sleep I seemed capable of only when she was there and knowing she would only stay so long. But, lost in disorienting and muddled repose or not, I little by little, degree by excruciating degree, became aware she was singing. Voice resonating slow, sad words. Tone and whole vocal expression melancholy.

_Summer star, why are you so red?_

_Because I had a sad dream last night._

_My eyes are red from the tears I’ve shed._

_Swollen as I cried._

_Summer star, why’ve you lost your way?_

_I’m searching for a child who’s gone a far._

_He can’t be found, though I’ve searched all day._

_My sad dreams come once more._

Unwilling to wake, the words ran through me like a stream trickling in my heavy mind. _Summer star, why’ve you lost your way?_ I twitched and curled tighter around the pillow I clutched, but the song went on and, eventually, I moaned, shivering and opening my sticking, sleep-gummed eyes. “What…” My head lifted, shoulders hunching and tensing. “What is that?”

Rai started, honestly surprised at my question, having been too wrapped up in her own song. Then she smiled at me and spoke soft. “Hey, Ko. How are you doing?”

I shook my head, trying to clear it, attempting to shake off her query. “What… What is that you’re singing?”

“It’s called _Natsuhiboshi_ ,” she told me gently, eyes weary, as she leaned over her folded knees and looked up at me. Rai had a way of sitting cross-legged on my floor. Said she liked it. “It’s a _Konoha_ lullaby. My father used to sing it to me.”

“Summer Mother and Child,” I repeated, the name hitting at a place in me, which stung.

“Most _Konoha_ citizens know it by heart,” Rai offered, offhand. “Do you want to learn the words, Ko?”

Not bothering to wait for an answer or affirmation, she proceeded to soft sing the haunting lines twice over and go through them with me repeating after her haltingly, until I could murmur the whole song without her help. It did not take much. I’d always been a quick student, used to memorizing by rout. My father and brother had seen to that.

But Rai seemed more pleased by my half-hearted recitation than either of my blood had ever been for the most complex of learned lesson. “You have a lovely voice, Ko,” she told me. “Maybe we can learn another song tomorrow?”

She left without an answer because I’d lain down again and twisted myself into a knot of blankets and pillows, but she didn’t seem to want one. It was just as well. I image she knew she had won a pass merely at my willingness to participate in her duet. Rai was not foolhardy. And she had been with me enough to know some of my moods.

When she had gone, I tired to return to fretful unconsciousness, but found I could not. The lullaby kept playing through my mind, a painful river running over wounds in my head and heart. Yet… the pain felt well. The way some purging _jutsus_ felt well, even as they inflected discomfort upon the patient. And with that pain I could not get the words out of my mind. They wanted to be released, would not leave me be, until I let them out.

How long I shifted on my bed, creating a tangle of my already twisted blankets and tossing my pillows askew, some ending on the floor as I squirmed, I wasn’t sure. It was night outside my high window and the dim space was full of the night sounds of dreaming prisoners and hushed guards, when I gave up my struggle and sat upright, the covers falling around me in a pool. I shielded my face with my hands and leaned forward over my knees. The melody came out of me like that, the song unfolding line after line.

I did not think how the stillness in the whole of the prison changed, did not care for how the already mellow noises in the place quieted and faded out, as my thick voice, so long disused, rose and fell. Honestly, I cared for nothing, until I’d sung the lullaby in full. Then I collapsed on my bed, weeping like a child. Crying as I hadn’t been able since the interrogation room and Ibiki.

It was exhausting. Sapping. But not unwelcome. It was cleansing, _purging_ , and when it was done, I slept soundly until the morning, though Rai was not with me.

Rai.

I shocked her when she came that day. I was sitting up in bed. Back propped against the wall, face turned up to the window, hands resting in my lap. Full of ennui or not, the fact I was up encouraged my caretaker. She fussed over me in the gentlest, most physically distant way a medical- _nin_ could. She meant it kindly, but I wanted little of it, only asking for another song.

She taught me one that day and several others over the succeeding days. It became our ritual and I did not resent it, though Rai’s growing excitement was more than indication this circumstance had been her intention all along. I’d found an interest. A thing which pulled me to the light and the surface of the dark water I’d been sinking in.

Song.

My ever-present comfort. Really, it had been with me from the first. My father and brother had started it, teaching me songs of _Ame_ to show me memorization and repetition. Kazue had furthered it with songs of _Kusa_ , _Iwa_ , and _Suna_ , taking me to see famous singers and unheard-of bards wherever we traveled. My children had maintained it, forming it into a necessity when we were alone in cells and barracks and hospital wards and on the hard earth somewhere on the borderlands.

_You have a gift_ , Kazue had once told me. _Gifts are meant to be used. The storyteller must weave words, the medic must heal, the singer must sing._

And with nothing else to do, no other purpose or reason for existence or life, I sang. When Rai was there to teach me, naturally, but when she was absent, as well.

Slowly, at first, because I lacked energy and will, but picking up momentum as I went. I sang once through my entire repertoire that first day after Rai’s visit, adding her songs to the list, then toppled into sleep. Tired and with little else to fill my time. The next day was a repeat with more songs from Rai included, but instead of sleeping right away, I considered, then sang through particular songs, sitting slumped back against the wall, my voice slow and sorrowful and littering. Like the birds in _Ame_ , calling their quick, chirping, mating rites in the short respites between bursts of never-ending rain.

This routine continued for days, longer, I was still dis-attached to a sense of time. Day and night were enough to grasp for me, and I didn’t want anything beyond them. In truth, I was too afraid to think of more. My world had narrowed, and I didn’t have the will to widen it. Not then.

What began the expansion was unexpected and unplanned, even by Rai.

It occurred because I sang without thought of being heard. No one stopped me. No one told me to shut up, this was a prison, keep your fucking mouth closed, as they would have in _Ishi_. So, I sang, not considering the guards or my fellow inmates. Until one night when I had been quieter than normal. Languid. Apathic. Mournful. I’d sung perhaps a single song, then gone silent. Laying unsleeping in my bed, an unseeing entity. Thinking of nothing and not noticing at first when a guard came to stand outside my miniscule space. It was only when he lingered there, shifting a bit in uncertainty, that I cocked my head and looked up at him, the beginnings of fear starting to turn my heartrate up.

“You’re Ko.” It felt more question than the statement it was, which was odd. This was a guard, something less than an ANBU, with his face uncovered, but still a _Konoha-nin_ holding the power over my life, and yet… He shuffled his feet nervously and looked saddened by my fright he must have seen clearly on my face. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he murmured low, more than apologetic. “It’s late. But… can… I ask you something?”

I swallowed, throat dry but heart slowing somewhat at this show of unbalance in the man. “Yes. You can.” The words were low and strained, the first I’d spoken to anyone but Rai since leaving Ibiki, but they came out.

“Can you sing _Natsuhiboshi_? One of our other wards is having trouble sleeping. The song… it’s his favorite and he asked if maybe we’d see if you’d… sing it.”

His stumbling and the admission both took the remainder of my anxiety. In a rush it came to me that of course I was heard, of course I was noticed. Only… I hadn’t been disliked. Instead, I’d somehow brought peace to at least one man, locked behind metal bars the same as I was. I’d eased his time in this place of shared imprisonment. And that… that… “Alright.” The single utterance escaped me before I could fully finish my thought or process the sensations beneath it.

My guard perked up at it, some of his awkwardness falling away. “Thank you, Ko,” he said with unfeigned relief.

I was pushing myself up, as he walked away. Pushing myself into a dazed, unbelieving sitting position with my palms buried in the mattress. I was a healer, above all, a medical- _nin_ , and for the first time in so long, I was offered something I could care for. A person I could help in such a simple way. The truth of it started the sting of tears in my eyes, but I didn’t weep. Wistful and sitting in a puddle of blankets, I just let my voice out in the words of the _Konoha_ lullaby that still planted pain in my chest, but which were now familiar on my tongue.

It still hurt, the song, but when it was done, I didn’t stop. Instead, I turned to another lullaby, the one I’d sung when I first met Ibiki.

_Let the rain carry you into the last goodnight._

_Let the rain carry you, everything’s gonna be alright._

From there I found myself moving through every soothing tune I knew. No one stopped me. The guard didn’t tell me everyone was asleep, I should join them. So, I sang until the light crept into the corners of the room and my own weariness got the best of me.

Rai found me dozing, propped up on the wall, twitching softly, my cheek pressed to the stone. She was surprised, once again, but smiled oddly when I told her what I’d been doing, muttering the circumstances, while I rubbed my eyes. “You’re sweet, Ko,” she told me.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not.”

But whatever I was, I kept singing for those around me. After that first time I agreed to sing for someone I didn’t know and couldn’t see, and never would, the guards didn’t hesitate to come to me with requests. Their own and those of the others sharing cells with me in the Intelligence Division. And I never refused. Night or day, I offered my voice to people I didn’t know.

It wore me out mentally and physically at times, but it kept me clawing at the beginnings of another attempt at life. That was enough. And those I entertained were grateful.

Once, after giving me the evening’s requests, one of the guards paused before venturing away. He looked down and back up, uncomfortable. Restless. “Thank you, Ko,” he said at last. “It’s never easy maintaining good spirits in… here. What you’re doing is helping. Our other wards call you the Songbird. They’re… fond of you and appreciate what you’re doing.”

I choked on tears and had to bury my face in my hands and turn away before the man could see me weep. Perhaps luckily, he seemed as awkward and embarrassed and unsure as I was and just quietly muttered, “Thank you, Ko.” again before turning away quickly. I had to allow myself to cry my eyes dry before I could raise my rasping, tight voice in song that night. But… the knowledge I was not only recognized but named by those around me gave me strength.

Strength enough for me to one day ask Rai how long it had been. How long I’d been residing in that cell after tearing out my heart and handing it to a man named Ibiki Morino.

She was reluctant to tell me, biting her lip and looking down at where her fingers were braced on the floor. Sadness, regret, and guilt colored her green and gray eyes when I voiced the question. Her features seemed to tighten with the emotions, her brow furrowing, and almost unconsciously, she leaned forward to grip her ankles, as if for support or reassurance. “It’s been two months, Ko.”

This stung and shocked me. Not just because I didn’t know how to reconcile or divide the time between how long I’d remained locked in motionless apathy and when I’d begun singing, but because it’d been two months since I’d surrendered my children to Ibiki. Two months. What’d happened in that time? Nothing? Anything? Everything? Were they alive? Dead? Worse? There was always worse. I’d learned that in Sakumo’s cells. A cruel lesson.

I didn’t ask Rai, though. She wouldn’t tell me. Couldn’t, no matter how pained or regretful or concerned with my wellbeing she might be. She was still of _Konoha_ , still a _Yōkai-nin_ , and had a job to do. All I could do was absorb her answer and curl down into a ball on my bed in acknowledgement and pain.

“I’m sorry, Ko,” Rai offered, and likely she was, but it did not change anything.

And I did not sing that night. I couldn’t seem to find my voice or my tears or the resentful, scurrying thing called sleep, which continued to elude me the more I chased it. I couldn’t even respond when one of the now familiar and unfeared guards came to linger on the other side of my bared cage, and said my name, “Ko. Are you alright, Ko?”

I didn’t answer in any tangible way, only curling down further into the nest I’d made of my bed, away from his voice, tightening myself into a knot of rejection. Close, closeted, and silent. But minutely shaking.

It was as though I could feel the heaviness of the man’s worry. I heard the subtle sounds of his shifting weight, sensed the depth of his indecision. “It’ll be alright, Ko,” he said at last, before retreating, but I did not think so.

How could things be alright?

An unanswerable question. I tried not to think of it as much as I tried to sleep. I fought for it, struggled to press my mind down into oblivion, but couldn’t. All I could do was lay there and ache, unweeping. Dry-eyed.

Yet, it is a strange thing when you extend kindness how at times it is returned to you at the most unlikely of moments. Huddled there, alone and holding a lifeless bundle of fabric when what I wanted was my children, I started. A deep, gravelly voice was growling out the words to the _Ame_ lullaby I sang so often, mangling verses and tripping over lines, but… singing. And once the surprised, ambient silence following the beginning of the song dissipated, other voices joined the first. Primarily male, but with a few female mixed within the swelling course, they rose one after another. Rough and soft and shy and bold. Mingling into a sweet and harmonious whole.

I was weeping before they finished _Let the Rain Carry You_ and shifted into _Kosumosu_. Weeping because they were singing for me, attempting to sooth whatever troubled me, as I had soothed them without thought of recompense or reward. Weeping because I thought the last person who had been kind to me, just for the sake of myself and not what good could be got out of me, had been Kazue. These wanted to comfort me because they felt they knew me in some way and _cared_. Cared for the part of me they knew. As narrow a view of me as that was.

I had to cry my eyes dry before I could join my thick voice to those around me. When I did, the others wavered and half stalled, only to swell again with renewed vigor at the knowledge they’d succeeded in rousing me from my stupor. Whether or not the guards joined in this strange, and doubtless very singular concert, for a while the whole prison sang. After a short time, voices began dropping out, one after another, as they’d joined, until only I and the gravelly voice, who’d started the affair, were left. When he finally stopped, I sang alone for a little while, until tiredness overcame me and I passed into sleep, mid song, without even realizing I was going to do it.

The pain of not knowing didn’t become any less after that, but the understanding I held value to my fellow inmates enabled me to continue. Rai approached me with trepidation the day following my question, but relief flooded her face when she found me awake. And we moved forward as we had, with no mention of what we both knew. That I needed an answer I would not get.

There was no part of me that ever expected to know what became of my children, just as I thought I would never leave my cell. Unless the great ones of _Konoha_ declared it a waste on resources to keep one broken and useless medical- _nin_ caged and deposed of me rather than keeping me. Those were the only ends I saw for myself, so perhaps it is no wonder I fell into resignation and fear when Rai came into sight of my space one day, agitation on her face, in the shadows of her eyes, and uncertainty in the set of her body, as she lingered just in my door.

Rai never lingered, never moved without purpose, and never blocked the bars from closing behind her. The fact she did all three told me something was different, and set off all my instincts, directing them toward terror. And Rai’s voice, pitched low, as she said my name, did not reassure. “Hey, Ko. How are you doing?”

My fingers curled into the edge of the mattress and my pulse beat in my throat, but I didn’t answer, couldn’t. And Rai knew it.

“Everything’s going to be alright, really it is,” she assured. “Can you trust me, Ko? Can you believe that?”

Distress and hope battled in her face and I swallowed, attempting to force down my heart, which was making its way up my throat to escape. Yet… “Yes.” I said the strained word, hoping it was true.

Rai’s smile was brittle, fragile, when it came, but she took a breath and reached a hand out, just short of me, we both knew I wouldn’t take. “Thank you, Ko.”

I stood, shaky, at her obvious invitation, and wobbled, as she smiled down at me. “It will be alright, remember that. No one’s going to hurt you.” She said the words, then looked back over her shoulder and to the side, nodding her chin at someone I couldn’t see.

My body swayed and I swallowed my heart when Ibiki stepped into view. A flicker in his dark eyes said he noted it, saw how the color left my face and my hands quivered. Still, his voice was calm and low when it came. Non-accusatory. “Hello, Ko.”

“Morino- _san_ ,” I managed, the words thin and worn.

“You’re not going to be interrogated further, Ko,” he told me softly. “You’re being transferred somewhere more permanent. I requested permission to escort you.”

“See, Ko,” Rai prompted. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

I was not sure I believed them, but Ibiki motioned me out of the cell I’d occupied so long, and I had no choice but to follow his direction. Rai was behind me when I stepped out, and both the guards I knew were standing to one side. I found myself blinking at them, eyes clouded with tears.

“Thank you.” The words were hoarse, but audible. The guards seemed taken aback, but accepted them with grace, dipping their heads in recognition.

Then there was no more time. Ibiki was walking and I was following on shaking legs. I would have carried on that way, numb and unseeing, if I hadn’t been stopped, simply pulled up short, by a voice like gravel in a well.

“Goin’ somewhere, Songbird?”

I faltered and glanced into a cell to see a large man laying propped up on an elbow looking out at me. Gray-eyed and surprisingly unscarred.

“What was that?” Ibiki asked the question smoothly, turning gracefully on his feet, the same sense of danger about him that radiated from a large, predatory cat. A jaguar or cougar, which padded towards its prey on wide, clawed paws. Without a sound.

I curtailed whatever my interrogator could or wanted to say with a low statement. “You sang to me.”

The man snorted. “If you call that singin.’ And now you’re leaven,’ little Songbird.”

I swallowed again, feeing Ibiki’s eyes on me and unsure how much Rai had told him, if she told him anything at all. “Yes.”

“Gonna miss your singin,’” he grunted. “I don’t have the voice for it.”

A little ache swelled in my chest. I was leaving again, being forced out of a situation I was at least beginning to feel in place within, and I did not know how to handle that. I didn’t want to go without leaving something behind for those who could not leave, but… “You don’t need a pretty voice to sing.”

I said the words and tottered forward because I already _had_ left something of myself behind for in this place. The man in the cell snorting at my retreating back and my admonition he _didn’t_ have a nice voice but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t use it to sing for himself, proving it. I’d left my songs behind. And the way to use them. It was all I’d had to begin with.

And more than enough.

My eyes were still half blurred with salt water when I looked up to find Ibiki had stopped walking. Had pulled up in front of a thick metal door and was looking back at me. Gaging me with his eternally calm, dark eyes. Weirdly like velvet, those eyes.

My feet brought me to a halt several paces away from him, while Rai came behind me. “Are you ready, Ko?” she asked, and her voice was edged with excitement, now. Excitement and something else. A thing I didn’t understand.

“Yes.” I seemed unable to say anything else. A refusal would have not mattered or been accepted anyway.

“It’s a surprise,” Rai said next, eyes brightening, hands coming up to hover before my eyes. Almost the way someone would come up behind someone else and clap they’re hands over the other’s eyes, only Rai never touched me, maintaining her palms and fingers several millimeters from my face, yet blocking my sight.

As if on cue, Ibiki opened the door. I knew because the light changed, washing over me in a brilliance that blinded. “This way, Ko,” the man instructed, and I took one trembling footstep forward at a time, Rai’s hands keeping pace with my movements and my own hand going up to block more of the light.

“It’s so bright.” The words were a tremble when my feet hit grass. And why shouldn’t they be? The unclouded sun was high overhead and it was the first time I’d been outside since being delivered into Ibiki’s care.

“Of course, it is,” Rai agreed, circling me, but never letting her hands drop, blocking a view I didn’t understand why she wanted to hide. “I did my best to arrange for a beautiful day because I wanted the first thing you saw to be the sun. And… the next thing you saw… to be this.”

With her last statement, Rai peeled her hands away and stepped aside, to reveal a scene in sun and shade and stunning pastels. There was a wide grass lawn stretching out around the prison, green and dotted and sprinkled with trees. In this dappled landscape, a crowd of medical- _nin_ in white stood or moved about. Some in the sun, some under and around and in the trees. They were a group of divergent ages, evenly split between adults and children, the older ones still and sedate, watching their younger brethren roam and play. But all of it in silence, a scene of lightness devoid of sound, as if the young ones chasing each other and scurrying up tree limbs had lost their voices or had them taken away. As if they’d forgotten how to play and were instead engaging in some form of terrible training the older ones did not understand or distinguish from the act of play. A macabre farce no one plucked out of the over-bright stage show before them.

It was… disconcerting and I wondered why this would be a thing Rai would want me to see. Then the silence changed, a face turned toward me, somber and intelligent, and a cry rang out, breaking the sight and the unnatural hush over it.

“Mother! Mother’s here! He’s here!”

“Haru.” The name fell off my lips, slow and dazed, as I swayed on my feet, hand grasping at nothing, looking for something to support myself with. Then I gave up the act, and I was shouting the name, shouting it because the oldest of my children was _right there_. RIGHT THERE! “Haru!”

I was running forward before I could consider. Before I could fully assimilate the slightly twisted, completely flummoxed and confused expression on Ibiki’s face at that utterly unexpected name of _mother_ directed at me, who he had never been able to see other than male. Running before I could think or remember it was a most unwise thing to do, that I _should not_ run from my once interrogator and now guardian, that doing so could be dangerous. Not that it mattered much. I’d been captive too long, locked away in a cell too long, allowed myself to lay in lethargy too long, and my legs were weak, unused to the exertion. I hadn’t gone for before I was panting, heart in my mouth, as I tripped to my knees.

This didn’t matter much, either. Haru had not spent months imprisoned. She’d been running out on the frontlines of a war situated on the borders of the Land of Fire, and she was strong and she was fit and it was barely a half sobbed breath before she was launching herself into my arms, nearly sending me sprawling, choking me with the force of her hold around my neck.

But this too didn’t matter because here was the oldest of my children in my arms, alive and breathing and gasping little sobs into my neck. “Mother! Oh, mother!”

I was crying, I knew that, my eyes near blind with it, and I was stroking her back with my hands, and I thought it was a dream. But I couldn’t deny the reality of it the next moment. From the first cry that I was there, the silence had once and truly been broken. The whole gathering of young medical- _nin_ had broken out in cries and calls and shouts, and hardly had Haru found her way into my arms than we were overrun by the rest. The rush of them knocked me fully onto my back and dislodged Haru from her hold, though she did not relinquish her hold entirely, and I found myself looking up at them all from the grass. Eyes blurred with tears, counting each one squirming over me, looking to see if each was whole, reaching to touch each face, searching for new scars. Several had new marks branding them, but all of them were there, each one accounted for, and they were dressed in clean white and they were washed, and they were healthy, and their wounds were tended.

My children. All of my children pressed to me, speaking at once, rotating so each could reach me, babbling out my name, “Mother! Mother! Ko!” and I could only imagine how I must look to Ibiki and the expression on his face at the sight of me, me who could not stand the slightest touch, buried beneath what amounted to a litter of jubilant and over-excited puppies. But I didn’t care. There were exceptions to every rule, and these were _mine_! My children, my blood, my family forged through pain and death, and all I could hear was their rambling, overlapping, and broken dialogs.

How terrified they’d been when the _Ishi_ squad had come back without me. How hard and bitter it’d been in the next weeks. How panicked they’d been when a battalion of _Konoha_ ANBU had infiltrated and captured the _Ishi_ stronghold. How they’d been treated so kindly and told I’d sent the ANBU to find them and how they’d been brought back to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, and how they were all living with _Konoha_ medical- _nin_ and they were going to be allowed to join the Academy and be trained as proper medics, and wasn’t it great?

My mind swam with it all, churned with a growing sense of loss, as well as swelling certainty. “How… how long have you been here?” I breathed out, barely audible.

But near drowned in the free flow of her siblings’ words or not, Haru heard me. She brushed aside the others and dropped onto my chest, hugging me tight again, her words at my ear. “We’ve been here two weeks, mother. It was horrible. They told us you were here but wouldn’t let us see you, and you were in the Intelligence Division- I- Mother. Are you alright?”

Blinking back thickening tears, I wrapped my arms up around her shoulders. My Haru, my oldest, the one who’d shared Sakumo’s attentions with me most deeply, who understood the most intimately. “Yes. I’m alright, Haru. I was interrogated but he didn’t hurt me. Morino… he isn’t like what Sakumo said.” I squeezed her. “It’s okay.”

“I- I didn’t know what to do when you were taken. I tried to protect them the way you did. I-”

“You did protect them, Haru. They’re here, all of you are here.” I brushed her hair off her forehead when I said it. Then I used what strength I had to sit us both upright and shoo the rest of my brood off me. “Alright, alright. I need… I need to talk to…” I glanced back to where Rai and Ibiki stood, unmoved from when I’d run from them, Rai smiling at me, Ibiki expressionless again, face unreadable, like his eyes, and hands thrust in the pockets of his coat. “Talk to Morino- _san_. Go back to the _Konoha_ medics for now.”

My children quieted and shifted, unwilling. I touched several faces, ran fingers through hair. “Everything’s alright, we’re together again, and I won’t let us be apart anymore.”

Haru watched my face, knowing me too well and being able to read when I lied. She saw the truth, that I hoped it was true, wanted it to be true, but didn’t know if it was, and still needed to go. Then, eyes so detached and hard and adult, she herded her siblings back toward the gathering of medical- _nin_ , still standing and watching, even as I stumbled to my feet and turned reluctantly toward my keepers.

“I don’t understand,” I admitted brokenly, when I reached them, swaying on my feet because I could not seem to find balance this day. “They’ve been here two weeks?” _Why? Why did you let me see them?_ The questions were left unspoken but were no less relevant. Rai and Ibiki both saw them.

“I’m sorry, Ko,” Rai said it low, with the same caution she used when viewing me as a wounded animal. She wanted me calmed, soothed, did not want me to bolt before she could explain. “I wanted to tell you, but… I… I didn’t want you to know they were here, until we could arrange for your release. Can you forgive me, Ko?”

My heart seemed to fail me, white, blinding nothingness rising behind my eyes on a wave of tears, a single word ringing and pounding through my mind. “Release?”

It was Ibiki who spoke next, voice as even and placid as ever, despite the fact he was assessing me, standing there, wavering on my feet. “The _Hokage_ declared you and your children displaced refugees of war, Ko, not enemies of _Konoha_. You’re free to go back to _Ame_ , if you wish, or you can go before the Third and request asylum. As war refugees, you are intitled to _Konoha’s_ protection, and if you request it, you and your children will be placed in the care and homes of our medical- _nin_ , who will help you assimilate into civilian life in the village.”

I swallowed, brushing at my eyes, then simply giving up and pressing the heels of my hands into them. Unable to take this in so quickly. “There is nothing for us in _Ame_.” And, looking out through my fingers at my children wandering over the grass, among the _Konoha-nin_ they already knew, Haru standing midway between them and me, her eyes turned appraisingly on the three of us, like a sentry, waiting, I knew I did not want and could not take them away from this place.

Ibiki nodded, as if he understood, or expected my answer. “Your appearance before the _Hokage_ and request for asylum is more formality than necessity, Ko. He wants to meet you, but arrangements have already been made for you and your children.”

“You’re coming home with me, Ko,” Rai offered, claiming my attention. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone, now did you?”

I shook my head, her words starting more tears in my eyes. It felt like all of me was spinning. Freedom. My children. Rai. And all of it… all of it…

Slow, almost dreamlike, I turned my weeping face up to Ibiki, not trying to hide the tear tracks rolling down my cheeks. I would not be standing in the sun of this moment if not for the scared man. “I can’t forgive you,” I rasped. “But… I understand.” With care I raised my hand and offered it to him.

Something flickered in Ibiki’s eyes the way it had in his interrogation room when I’d threatened him. He reached back and took my hand with care, knowing what it cost me, that touch, as well as the recognition of him as not my enemy. His hold was firm, and he did not ridicule me at my shudder, only keeping the contact until I released him. Then he spoke. “Can I take your collar off, Ko?”

My fingers went to the wide band of leather, hesitantly. I had worn the thing so long I’d forgotten it was there. Forgotten its existence. The collar felt a part of my skin, even as it sealed away the most intimate part of me behind a wall I couldn’t breach. Swallowing, yet again, I did not answer, just turned my back and lowered my head, giving him room to reach what he wanted.

He must have sensed the vulnerability of the position I’d willingly put myself in, but Ibiki was kind. A brush of his hand, to push down my high medical- _nin_ collar, a flare of his _chakra_ , and he was unwrapping the leather from my neck, pulling it away from my skin. The feel of it coming away was like a scab from a deep wound. A thing pulled off, allowing the blood to flow out. The blood of my very being.

My _chakra_ bubbled up from the depth of me, slow at first, beginning like water from a hot spring, then like magma released from the heart of the earth. Hot, gravid, thick, torrid. Burning. Above all, burning. The force of it, the rush of it would have moved my hair in a source less wind, would have pushed Ibiki and Rai and even my children back or off their feet if I allowed it. But even as it came and I flexed my hand, clenching and unclenching it reflectively over and over again at the feel of my life energy unleashed and flooding my sinew, I calmed it. Quieted it, shut it away behind barriers, until nothing remained of it but a heated layer along my skin, something light and soft and warm and befitting of a medical- _nin_. Almost thoughtlessly, I made my life energy an inoffensive thing, as my father and brother had shown me from the first moment I had been old enough to understand my own fire affinity, the way Kazue had insisted I maintain it, so I wouldn’t being every rogue _shinobi_ and sensitive _nin_ in twenty kilometers down on our heads.

The release and resealing happened so quickly, so utterly in sync, Ibiki had no notion of what he’d unsealed, any more than the _Ishi_ revengers had known what they’d managed to collar before Kazue’s death had relieved me of his mandate I _should not_ kill, _should not_ fight. Standing in the moment with the fire free again, I knew I could have my revenge. I could make them regret.

Yet…

Haru watched me, gaged me, eyes too serious for her thirteen years. My other children milled on the grass, cast me glances. Waited.

I didn’t want to make them pay. I wanted… wanted-

“Are you ready, Ko?” Rai asked at my side, smile wary but hopeful. “Will you introduce me to your children?”

My throat constricted and I used a palm to smear tears off my face. It was painful to speak, but I did. “Yes.”


	6. Konoha Blues, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have intentionally been avoiding using chapter notes in this story, but I feel this chapter, at least, deserves one. These thirteen thousand words have given me nothing but trouble while I dealt with them, however, there were a few people there to help me. So here's a shout out to them. First off, a thank you to Tridraconeus because, as busy as you've been, you were still there to remind me of just who Ko is essentially. I needed that. Second, thank you, my dear Kakashiforever! You have been with me this whole damn time, as I panicked and ranted about how much I hate this and how my story was falling apart. Your constant assurance you still wanted to know what happened and that you would love it no matter what, have meant more than I can say. And third, though you may never read this note, thank you Tod! You took a good hour out of what I know was a busy work night to go over the entire end of this story with me and help me see a possibility I never would have found on my own. I needed that so much. You are literally the best editor ever! So, thank you all. Chapter's done, people! "falls over and laughs hysterically"

**Spike Spiegel** : “Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I’ve been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture.”

 **Faye Valentine** : “Don’t tell me things like that. You never told me anything about yourself, so don’t tell me now!”

 **Spike Spiegel** : “I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from. Before I knew it, the dream was over.”

**Cowboy Bebop, The Real Folk Blues Part Two**

We walked together, Rai and I, to where Haru waited and then, with my daughter’s hand woven through mine, we three wadded into the sea of my other children. At our approach, they flowed out to meet us and around us, like a strange, silent tide, unsure of Rai, at first, despite her medic’s whites. But this only lasted until I told them she had been kind to me, had taken care of me. Then Rai found herself nearly overrun by a chattering band, eager to learn her name and tell her theirs, and pluck from her all that had happened between her and _mother_. Rai tried to take it well, but I could see she became quickly flustered and uncertain under the unmeaning assault. Obviously unused to children. Or, maybe, just too so many clambering for her attention at once.

The fact rose something fond and sympathetic in me, like a warm glow in my heart, and I moved to save her, rescuing the woman who had kept me alive and above water with a few soft words and motions of my hands, leading my brood to pull me into the gathering of _Konoha_ medical- _nin_ , instead. There Rai seemed more on sturdy footing, while my young ones showed me by turns the _Iryō-nin_ who had cared for them the previous weeks.

I had an easier time learning the names of the Leaf _nin_ than Rai had my children. What was more difficult was seeing the way these medics of the Land of Fire smiled and spoke with affection of my little ones. A possessive thing in me said they had no right, they had not spent months and years suffering with them. They had known my children for scant days. And yet, my brood cooled this half frightened, defensive impulse as naturally as breathing. They spoke with absent difference with their assigned guardians, but they clung on me, attaching themselves to my person in as clear a sign of possession as their constant affirmation I was mother. _Their_ mother. However kind these strangers had been to them, we still belonged together.

And yet… Somewhere deep in me, some other part of my crumbled psyche, one buried and sad and serious, told me this was not well, my young ones should have proper families and homes, should have lives and security I could not offer them. I had been their defense and shelter in a time when we had been surrounded by enemies and suffering, but… in a place where we were offered kindness, I had nothing to provide. Nothing to give. I, too, was broken and in need of mending. I was dead and had not found a way back to life. I was empty in the face of _Konoha_.

I knew it to be true, but it broke my heart to pieces and brought stinging tears to my eyes because then what was to become of me? I would be alone again. Alone, even while my family of choice grew up around me but apart from me. The knowledge left me slow and wane. Quiet. As I gently smiled at the medical- _nin_ speaking to me. Listless.

Rai, my ever-present caregiver, noticed the mood creeping over me and the subtle changes in my features, noted the shine in my eyes, and turned a kind smile on me. “Hey, Ko, you okay?” she asked, knowing my tells now all too well. I passed my emotion off as weakness and weariness, something which was not entirely lie. I was tired. For months, I’d been neglecting myself, and my body felt the strain and the lack. Ria did not question this obvious fact. She and her fellow medics simply helped to herd my pack of younglings and the whole of us, of our strange, white-clad flock, walked away from the prison grounds and the Intelligence Division.

We did not have far to go. The _Konohagakure Jōhōbu_ , the _Hokage_ Tower, and the Tree Leaf Hospital were all within a short distance of each other at the center of _Konoha_ , and the guiding _Iryō-nin_ brought us through that inner-most part of the Village Hidden by Leaves to a barracks on the grounds of the _Konoha Byōin_. A place designed to house on-call medical- _nin_ , who did not wish to return to their homes, further out in the sprawl of the village, when they could be summoned to the Hospital at any time. Only, the medics who usually occupied this space had been purposefully moved out, to make way for twenty-one _Ame-nin_ and their twenty-one _Konoha_ counterparts.

At least, for this day.

It was clear the arrangement had been designed to allow my children and I a calm and quiet reunion in a place we would equate with safety. Where there would be nothing to frighten or push us into stress. Where we could all easily be in one room and not feel crowded or confined. Perhaps, this was especially true where I was concerned. I could see Rai attempting to ensure I did not feel cooped up again so soon after being freed.

And the barracks was a wide space. An open and nonthreatening space. It was long and wide and filled with shifting afternoon light sifting in from high windows, left open to admit sweet air, as much as permit that light to gild the smooth, age and use worn wood floors. This was a space that had not known grief or despair in the deep way other buildings had. It was not haunted by these lingering emotions, as I had felt them in other structures. And it eased me. Looking down the length of the main room, where all the bunks were empty and had been made up with fresh linens, I felt a hollowness akin to relief spread through me.

A thing accentuated by the _Konoha_ medics themselves. The moment we entered this open construction of thick, but soaring beams and broad spaces cut through with knives of sun that set motes of dust spinning like bits of glitter, the Leaf _shinobi_ turned away into another part of the barracks. A kitchen, which had been stocked with food enough for twice our number. Sure sign these _nin_ knew all too well what it meant to feed a brood of pre-teens who had been expanding _chakra_ and energy running in the sun. Within minutes, the lot of them were moving in a complex, seeming choreographed, dance around each other, creating no small meal and filling the whole barracks with warmth and overlapping scents, which blended into a wholesome completion.

Rai joined the laughing and gently chiding group, offering for me to do the same, if I liked, but it was hardly more than an off-hand query and we both knew it. It was clear I did not want to be apart from my children any more than they were willing to part from me. As soon as the adults were occupied, my little ones stripped the beds bare of blankets and pillows and made a nest of them in the center of the floor. Haru put me in the middle of it and the rest surrounded us, draping themselves over the two of us and each other, in effort to be closer. And in whispers and small voices, they prompted me to tell them everything that’d happened since the _Ishi_ took me on patrol.

I told them everything, sparing very little, but Haru wouldn’t be satisfied I hadn’t been physically harmed, until she had nearly stripped me and gone over my body with a fine inspection. Only when she found no evidence of new injury did she seem capable of relaxing with the rest of her siblings and joining them in the retelling of what had happened with them since I saw my precious ones last.

Despite everything, it was a quiet and reserved tale. Most murmured or soft-spoke their parts, so when Rai peeked into the room it must have seemed a cozy scene to see me buried under my pack of white-clad ten, eleven, and twelve-year-olds. But her wistful smile said she didn’t understand the soft rumble of words we were saying to each other. Young or not, we had learned how to be quiet in _Ishi_ prisons.

My young ones had only come to the point where the _Konoha_ ANBU had begun bringing them back to the Leaf village when our hosts completed their work and invited us to eat. It was a kind thing they did, not pressing us to eat at the long tables, but allowing my children to take what they wanted and return to the nest they had made. It was still difficult for me to eat, but with my children around me, I found a better appetite. And when it was done and the light was slipping from the sky, the _Konoha-nin_ did not try to separate us, did not say reproachful things for the beds having been stripped. They just remade the bunks with spare linens, still laughing and gently talking together.

It was their quiet voices, chattering together, that lulled us to sleep little by little. The medics lay in the beds ruminating on past, shared experiences at the Hospital or on missions, while I and my children lay a sprawl in the tangle of blankets and limbs in the center of the floor. Too often we’d huddled for warmth and reassurance this way and now it was too hard to sleep any other way.

Rai watched us, little, unsure smile on her face, until she started yawning and retired to the closest bed and slept. I did not want to sleep, did not want to waste the day, the time I’d been given to reacquaint myself with my family, but with Haru laying on my chest and the others breathing softly around me, some tucked under my arms, I found I could not keep awake and dropped off to oblivion with tears dampening my lashes.

The next day was more difficult, more worrisome and wearying. The _Konoha-nin_ tried to make it not so. Under what I was sure was Rai’s direction, they did their best to maintain an atmosphere of ease and lightness with nonsensical chatter and littering laughter. Smiling and speaking softly, they roused me and my brood and provided me with clean, fresh attire, a pristine, white medical- _nin_ uniform cut in the Leaf fashion, and when I was cared for, they turned to the creation of another meal before we need begin the necessities of the day.

Because this day I and my children would need appear before the _Sandaime Hokage_ and make our appeal for asylum. I attempted to hold on to calm, to keep my heart from stuttering, to not let my internal anxiety and fluttering unease show in my outward mannerisms because I did not want to spread my fear to my children, but it was impossible to keep my right hand from creeping to my left wrist and gripping it compulsively.

The walk away from the barracks and the grounds of the Tree Leaf Hospital did not help this, despite the kind attentions of our watchful medics of the Land of Fire. We passed through the central portions of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, and both the Leaf _shinobi_ we crossed paths with and the very openness of the day and height of the sky, were difficult to dear. After so many months within doors and enclosed spaces, I felt exposed and vulnerable in the wide open air.

Passing into the walls of the structure they called the _Hokage_ Tower should not have loosed a constriction on my lungs, but it did and I found myself breathing freer. Yet, this only made way for other fears to twist in that pit of my stomach and I could not keep my right hand from crawling up my left arm to my elbow again, to grasp it in little, spasmodic bursts.

Rai noticed it. Her face and the lines around her eyes said she wanted to comfort me, but it was Haru who pressed herself to my side. Haru who wrapped my arm around her middle and looked up at me with sorrowful, placid, intent, gray eyes. “It’ll be alright, mother,” she assured, and I offered her a broken smile, one of my few. My oldest daughter’s sad, intelligent gaze said she hoped her own words were true. We both did.

But there was little we could do, beyond entrust ourselves to the good graces of the _Konoha_ medical- _nin_. And their _Hokage_.

I expected we would meet with the one they called the Third in his office, but this expectation was not met. We were brought to a conference hall near the inner most portion of the Tower. And perhaps this only made sense, given our number. Doubtless, Rai and the rest thought to give us space, so that we, and me in particular, would not feel caught or confined in so small a room as an office.

Ultimately, it did not matter.

Nor did my continual inability to predict what would come next. The _Sandaime_ was also not as I would have imagined him, if given more time to fret over our meeting. An old man in white, that flowed around him and melded with his snowy hair. A quiet patriarch with deep eyes and subtle, studying air that spoke of calm and reserved thoughtfulness. Certainly, he was strong, capable of battle and devastation on the field, his _chakra_ , unhidden, moving through his _Keirakukei_ like a flood, told of that. But he projected no threat or harmful intent. He merely sat, wreathed in a moving cloud of pipe smoke scented of cloves.

The smell lulled me. It was one which was familiar and dear to me. Associated with my most ingrained memories of security and safety. Though he had done so seldom, Kazue had indulged himself with a clove cigarette on rainless evenings in _Ame_. Blending the sweet, stinging scent of spice with the cloying musk of damp earth and decomposing vegetation. The _Hokage_ of _Konoha_ and his long-stemmed pipe brought me back to sitting in the blue twilight and looking up, as the constellation of the Hunter marched up the sky and Kazue told me the stars reminded him of me, and I sat still before the Third, looking at him with appraising, colorless eyes.

Hiruzen Sarutobi let me examine him for some time before he spoke, and when he did, the man seemed to do all he could to not press me too hard or create the feeling he demanded anything.

_Was I coming before him to ask asylum for myself and my children?_

_Yes, yes, I was._

_He had made arrangements for us to remain with the medical-_ nin _I had met over the preceding day, while we assimilated into life in_ Konoha _, was this acceptable?_

_Yes, yes, of course._

_Perpetrations had been made for my children to join the Academy the following day, so that they could continue their training as_ shinobi _and_ Iryō-nin _, or any other class of_ nin _they should desire, was this well?_

_Yes…_

Though it squeezed my heart and left me bent over my knees in pain with tears starting in my eyes, I could not take this from my children. They deserved to be given the chance to decide their own paths. I could not interfere.

It was several minutes before the man spoke again, but when he did, it was all about me.

 _Rai had volunteered to see to my integration into_ Konoha _, was this to my liking?_

A pause, a glance to the woman, who for once, looked unsure with her lip between her teeth. _Yes, yes, it was…_

A nod, a gentle consideration. _I was free to enter work at the_ Konoha Byōin _, if and when I felt ready to do so, but would I consent to seeing a psychologist once a week? I had undergone much stress in the Intelligence Division, when I had already suffered much, he would now help relieve my pains._

_Yes…_

I said it with my nails cutting into my palms. As faux-kind as the man was being, I did not delude myself into thinking he fully trusted me. I had dared use threat against Ibiki Morino and he had taken it seriously. Broken, bound, _chakra_ sealed behind barriers I could not breach, I’d shown him the thing I had hidden in me, let him look down into me, and whatever Ibiki had seen, he’d warned the _Hokage_ against. The Third’s _request_ was not to be denied.

Just as his next was mandate wrapped in curtesy.

_Would I also consent to visit him once a month? He would see to my wellbeing._

_Yes. Yes, of course. Whatever he wanted._

Whatever he wanted. If it would keep my children safe and free, I would submit to anything.

Perhaps they saw that, perhaps they knew it was leverage against me, and yet they asked for nothing more than this.

Still, I was tired and worn when it was done, and we were freed to leave the Tower. Withdrawn and quiet, almost wandering, as I was led out. Exhaustion tears crawled out of my eyes and Haru’s arm around my waist seemed to hold me up. Some part of me expected a separation then, a breaking up of my children back to their respected houses, but again Rai and her compatriots had seen to our care. To my care…

They brought us to a grassy place in the fading sun with the splash and rush of a river they called the _Naka_ nearby. They let us rest there, laying in a fan on the ground with our heads together toward the sound of water and our feet toward our attending _Konoha-nin_. One more chance to be together and speak of our private, family things.

Laying there, listening to the remains of my children’s tale, I became aware they had been debriefed, but kindly. In the _Konoha_ Hospital, with a medical- _nin_ present. And Ibiki had used his subordinates, sending his most inoffensive and inconspicuous ones to speak to my children, guessing perhaps that if Sakumo had spoken of him to me, he might have done so to them as well and not wanting to frighten them. Only to Haru had Ibiki spoken in person, and she _had_ recognized him at once and let him know it, refusing diplomatically to speak to him, until he’d assured her I was alright and she would see me soon.

I had the impression, listening to her inflectionlessly speak, Haru harbored distaste bordering on abject disdain and disgust for the scarred man. She liked him to Sakumo and held against him the things he had done to me, not considering what he had refrained from doing.

“He told the ANBU to say I sent them to find you, and brought you back to me, Haru,” I said, voice distant. Not sure why I was defending the man to her, beyond the fact he had kept his word. Had told me the truth and reunited me with my children. What I had told him at our parting had been true, as well. I did not forgive him, but I understood.

Haru did not. Or, chose to hold onto anger for the time being. But she did not contradict me. And, in the end, we only lay, dozing in each other’s arms, until it was evening and it was cool and it was time for my children to leave me.

One by one, the guardians of my little ones smiled tiny pulls of their lips and said it was time to go. Heart clenching, I enfolded each child in a hug and said I would see them in the morning. They clung to me, fingers clutching my clothes and skin, and it was me who had to pry them away, had to turn them to their assigned medic and tell them to go. Light-headed and spinning with it all, on the verge of real tears though I was.

It was only Haru who had the presence of mind and stubborn will to resist. She turned her flinty eyes on her _Iryō-nin_ , stolid and unflinching, and told him to wait. The poor man stood blinking confused eyes, while my daughter wrapped her arms around me and pressed her cheek to mine. “It’ll be alright, mother,” she said again, and I could only burst out a hysterical, broken laugh, the tears coming out at last, as I wound my arms around her.

“Yes, yes, it will,” I agreed, and let her go.

My daughter’s eyes didn’t change, as she turned to follow her guardian away. I imagined the man was already discovering her stubborn will and learning to dread it. That will had been forged in horror and wouldn’t be broken by kindness. The shear fact of it made me laugh still more, half hiccupping with sobs. My child, so like me.

When she had gone, the others quickly followed, and soon it was only Rai and I left in the fading light. “Hey, Ko,” my protector said, as she so often did, small, worried smile on her lips, “are you ready to go home?”

I wasn’t, would never be, but could find no way to tell her that. I simply walked toward her extended hand, the one we both knew I wouldn’t take, and allowed her to lead me through the deserted streets to her home.

It was small. No more than an apartment of someone who seldom spent time there. Cluttered, but comfortably so. Books strewn here and there, amid the bric-à-brac of life. Uniforms and _kunai_ and discarded coffee cups, some part full. It had been so long since I’d been in such a place or imagined it, I found it difficult to take it in or know what to do there. I found myself just standing in rooms, turning my head this way and that, watching Rai like a dog that’d been whipped once too often and now could only whine and slink away when spoken to.

Rai noticed my discomfort. There was no way not to. But her attempts to ease it did little to sooth me. Time, I needed time, and that was the hardest thing.

Somehow we made it through a meal I didn’t remember and Rai talked of sleep. There was only one bed, she told me I would have, but this didn’t work out well. Doubtless, Rai would have been fine on her couch, but I was not fine in her bed. I could not sleep, only toss and turn and struggle with the blankets. Not because the mattress was uncomfortable but because it was a torture to know my children were so close and not be able to be with them. We’d never been apart when so close together and it left me weeping.

Which, of course, brought Rai to her own bedroom door, asking if she could come in. A thing that made me laugh hysterically because, of course, she could! It was her house, she could do whatever she wanted. But she didn’t. Rai lingered outside her own door, until I invited her in. Then she made a nest of blankets on her floor and asked me if I wanted to sing. With nothing else to do, I agreed and we ran through songs, until exhaustion finally claimed me and I fell asleep.

Waking was a little easier because I knew I would get to see my children. Or… waking was easier for me. Rai seemed to have a time of it and not because she’d slept on the floor. The woman just seemed a wreck, unable to focus or articulate coherent thoughts, until after she got two cups of coffee in her. Then she seemed to perk up, snap back into her cheerful self, as if she’d never been a bumbling, mumbling, sleep-addled thing, and asked if I was ready to go meet my children.

I was, I was, I truly was and it didn’t take long for us to be on our way. The Academy was closer to the center of _Konoha_ but not directly within it. There was a considerable amount of open space around it and sharp, clear voices rang out from it more frequently the closer we got to the structure. The clear calls of children engaged in activities and content to be so.

My own young ones were gathered outside the entranceway and murmured greetings when they found Rai and I among them. Though we were happy to be together, our voices were muted and remained so through much of the day. The instructors were pleasant and kind and the _Konoha_ pre- _genin_ curious and inquisitive, but my children and I cautious. We stayed down, stayed quiet, stayed observant and watchful. Gagging each interaction for hidden meaning.

There was little to find, though. These _Konoha-nin_ were little more than they showed us and soon my brood settled to try learning what they were taught.

It was not easy. The morning began with instruction in a typical classroom and despite how my children tried, they struggled. They had had little chance for traditional learning in _Ame_ , born civilians during a war, and less chance as prisoners forced into service in _Ishi_. I’d given them what I could, but the pre- _genin_ of the Leaf had them outdone.

At least… until the instructors pulled the collection of children to the yard and gave them blunt _kunai_ and mock targets to deal with. There my children exceled. Quick, efficient, brutal in the way only real life experience in a war can explain, all of my little ones completed their tasks before any of the _Konoha_ children could begin. The Academy instructors seemed stunned, as did Rai.

But all of that fell away when a child dropped off a ledge she’d tried to leap to and failed to catch herself. Before any of the adults could react, Haru was there, soothing and providing care to a shocked and teary-eyed soon-to-be- _nin_ who hadn’t properly worked her way up to crying yet. Haru examined her and mitered out care with the gentle firmness and bedside manner of any battlefield medic and soon the mostly uninjured per- _genin_ was back on her feet and hotly declaring it was an unfair fall and she would succeed in the jump the next time.

The _Konoha_ instructors’ happy-relieved smiles and laughter were instant signs of their appreciation, and soon they were expressing gratitude and congratulations to Haru. A younger one, a man hardly older than me or Rai and obviously in his first year of teaching, with a scar cutting the bridge of his nose said it was like having an entire brigade of _Iryō-nin_ from the Hospital on staff, and wasn’t that a relief? They’d been in need of that for ages.

Almost as if the incident was a catalyst, something broke between my group and the inhabitance of the Leaf. With slow care, my little ones appeared to take the notion of being a medical squad, assigned to the Academy, as seriously as any mission they’d served for _Ishi_. Soon they attached themselves to various, younger, fellow students, who showed signs of needing special care or attention and that was it. They’d found a better purpose than learning the skills of the Academy and launched themselves after it as I’d taught them. With brutal intensity and focus.

Standing off to one side in the gathering evening, watching them mix with their younger, _Konoha_ counterparts, I felt a growing sense of emptiness. But weightlessness. As if a burden I didn’t know I’d been carrying was lifted away. It left me dizzy and I hardly noticed when Haru came up to my side, snuggled under my arm, as she so often did in _Ishi_. I just glanced down at her, this girl, only two or so years my junior, but already barely a head under my height and growing quickly, and glanced away again. We’d never really needed too many words, Haru and I. We understood each other.

And we just watched.

Happy laughter, unrestrained, and mellow, moderated, carefully contained and thought-out bursts of mirth intermixing in the remains of the day. Leaf and Rain, playing together.

“I think we’re going to be alright here, mother.”

I glanced down at her again, then back up. “Yes. I think we might be.” My voice was strained around the edges, but…

But it seemed Haru might be right, as the days moved to something more and time carried on.

That day, that one day, was the only one we spent with my little ones in the Academy. The next, and all those that followed, Rai spent with me. Kindly smiling at me and prompting me to investigate her home, to cook with her, to read with her, to watch movies with her. And… little by little, to come out of the safety of her walls, the sanctuary of her small, vulgarly cluttered home and into the streets of _Konoha_.

I did it. I walked out of her reassuring, comforting enclosure and into the open, even if the sky still felt too high above me and I shied away from anyone who passed too close. Skittered around them like a mouse across the floorboards. I ate noodles in savory broth with her at _Ramen Ichiroku_ , I watched my feet in the dirt, as we walked and she called greetings to those we passed, never chatting or attempting to engage in idle chatter, but kindly keeping her eyes on me. I did it all. And curled into an exhausted ball on her bed or her couch when it was done. Weeping softly.

I could tell Rai wanted to comfort me. Wanted to reach out and touch me, while she crouched beside me and gently said my name. “Hey, Ko? How you doing?” But she never did and her presence eased me. Allowed me to rest.

As did the knowledge I would see my children every day. We may not have spent our days in the Academy with them, but every afternoon we would go to meet them, as they left their studies, and the _Konoha-nin_ would let me forget myself and my fears with them. My dear ones… They would let us wander into parks and up the _Naka_ River and let us lay on the grass and play in the sun. Play as we were accustomed to playing, and not as the young were expected to play. Games of _Ame_ and my childhood and lost family. Seek and Engage and _Shunshin_ Tag between the trees and over the water… Games of skill and talent designed to hone and enhance the same.

Rai seemed surprised by our method of play and by how only the youngest of my brood struggled with full _shunshin_ , giggling a little, as they held their breath and channeled their _chakra_ and popped perhaps a foot or two from their original spot, and I had the impression, despite her proficiency in _taijutsu_ , Rai couldn’t do it. Tactical and offensive _jutsus_ weren’t her forte.

Yet, Rai _was_ skilled in _taijutsu_. After watching me spar with my children and instruct them in technique several times, she asked to spar with me as well. Time and again, she would try. It was at those times I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes. Fear of me in those green and gray orbs, taking me in and seeing something within me that did not align with her external view of me.

We were a poor match, Rai and I. I could disable any of her attacks in three moves and break any of her blocks in one. Without effort, without thought, with all the bare, base brutality I’d been taught since I was a child.

Haru was better. My daughter had a natural affinity for the _ninja_ arts. Over and over, she would draw me out onto the water and we would test each other’s skill. Moving like dragonflies across the liquid surface, almost too quick to see, our bodies shimmering with the drops we kicked up. No, Haru was almost as good as I was, and could sometimes land a blow, if I was careless.

But no one could beat me at _Shunshin_ Tag. No matter how they tried, no matter how cleverly they evaded, none of my children could ever stop me from simply appearing behind them and pulling them down into a squirming tangle of limbs on the ground. They would squeal, now that their voices had been released by time in _Konoha_ , and laugh and say, “Mother! Mother! No fair, mother!” but they could never win. Speed and agility had always been my friends and weapons of choice. Not years with Kazue or in the darkness of Sakumo’s cells or a war unwillingly fought could change that.

But, in addition to the play I knew put Rai at unease, my young ones and I would spend hours in the fading light just leaning on each other and singing. Sharing new songs we’d learned and revisiting old ones we loved. My ever watchful guardian called us a flock of songbirds once, with a wistful smile, and the words went to my heart. Turning it over. Making me sad.

_Songbird._

The name my fellow prisoners in the Intelligence Division had given me. Those who had been so kind to me, while I was there, when I had been in pain and alone, apart from Rai, and who were still there, still locked behind bars and steel while I was free. The reality left me weeping into my hands and all my family reached to comfort me, but Rai looked stricken. Unable to discern what had wrecked me, until she asked, “Oh, Ko, what’s wrong?”

It was not easy to say, not easy to tell with my children so close, but I did and when it was done, I asked my first thing of Rai. Begged a small request she seemed startled to hear, but gave me without a thought.

That was how I found myself surrounded by my children, with Rai at my side, as we all joined our voices in _Natsukiboshi_ and other _Konoha_ lullabies, and darted from roof-top to roof-top to tree limb. The people of the Leaf looked up in wonder, but I gave no thought or concern to that. Let them look. All that consumed me was one thought, one idea, brooding at the horizon of my mind like the complex of buildings coming into focus before us.

The Intelligence Division.

It should have made me sick inside, but… my family around me and Rai singing so near me, I could feel no fear. We took to the trees around my once cell block, and sang among the leaves. Like the flock of birds we were. At first those within were quiet, but gradually, a stirring came from the stone walls and voices filtered out the high, narrow windows. Something… that lightened my heart.

Afterward, we would often go and sing at the Intelligence Division. Rai, in her way of knowing what went on behind it all, told me the guards and prisoners appreciated what I did. This also lightened my internal darkness. It loosened some of the knots I was tied up in inside myself. Released something soft and grateful.

Maybe that was just as well. The days were passing, the seasons were changing. Summer into fall, and… I was changing. Beginning to want more than Rai’s house.

The therapist Hiruzen had assigned to me thought it was well… That I should want something.

The first time I had gone to see the woman, the day after my children had started at the Academy, Rai had asked if I wanted her to come in with me. She would, if I wanted her to. I had told her no. Despite myself, despite my fear, I had told her no, and told myself the woman in the discreet and homey office was not Ibiki. This was not an interrogation, this was a conversation. But I knew better, knew I, in part, lied to myself. Knew this was not entirely a simple thing. And I wept there, on her couch, with my fingers pressed to my face, and all before she ever asked me anything.

But the woman knew her job well and worked her way past my stark terror and eased me slowly. Why shouldn’t she? Telling me about herself, she informed me we had one thing in common. She had studied as a medical- _nin_ before turning to psychology. But more than that, she knew how to acquire information as well as Ibiki did, if in a different and more subtle way. She had been given my file. She knew my mental state well and what would really distract me from my fear.

She did not pry for my feelings or the internal secrets I held close and secure, but instead asked me something nearer and dearer to my heart that first day.

_I had children, didn’t I?_

_Yes, yes I did._

_What were their names? Could I tell her about them?_

Before I knew it or understood what was happening, she had me rambling about my dear ones, half choking over my tears, my legs drawn up, knees to my chest and arms wrapped around them. It was half happy, half hysterical what I said, but there was love in it. Love for lives that had become entangled with mine. And maybe she’d sensed it. She asked me one question of how I felt, that day. Only one. _How did I feel having my children back?_

And rocking forward, burying my face in my legs, I told her, as I shuddered, _Relieved, I felt relieved._

I’d been so worn after that session. I hardly remembered anything, apart from Rai’s concerned face, until I’d seen my children. But I kept going back. Week after week, I kept going back to speak with the woman and let her see what lay under my skin, as she peeled it back. I had no choice, really, and I knew it and I accepted it as part of what I had to do to keep my children safe. I would endure anything if it meant them safe…

The woman was kind as she could be, though. As kind as she was allowed to be in her position of continuing to find the things Ibiki could not in our time together. She did not push. Did not dig for those things Morino had not managed to unearth and I had no wish to say. Not right away. Instead, she concentrated on other things. Easier things.

 _Were my children happy in the Academy? Was I alright with how they were adjusting to life in_ Konoha _? Did I enjoy living with Rai, a fellow medical-_ nin _? What did I think of the Village Hidden in the Leaves? Was there anything I lacked?_

Mostly simple and unobtrusive things. Neutral things.

For weeks and more weeks, it was the same, until I was relaxed. Until I didn’t cringe or cry when I saw her. Until I sat placid and dry-eyed on her couch, and could talk with a steady voice. Only then did the questions change.

_I’d been interrogated in the Intelligence Division by Ibiki. How did I feel in regard to that? Was I recovering? Was I angry? Distressed in any way?_

I did not want to answer. Did not want to review that line of thought and memory. But it was what she wanted, and I did and I hated it. There were few things I tried to hide, though, all the same. What was the point in it? Refusing would only lead to worse things, and I’d given so much to Ibiki, it did not matter what else I released. About _Ishi_ and Sakumo. About _Ame_ and Kazue… How deeply I missed Kazue.

But there were some things I did refuse to let her touch. Some places I didn’t grant her access to. Some things that I would still willingly suffer for, so long as that suffering did not extend to my children.

Two months after I first started seeing the woman, two months after my reunion with my little ones, she asked me to tell her my name. _Ko wasn’t my real name, was it? It was only what people called me, wasn’t it? Would I tell her my real name?_

I turned to her, expressionless, solid, unyielding, and told her I didn’t want to talk about that. I was Ko. _Just Ko._

If she was taken aback by this, my first and flat denial into a part of my past, she didn’t show it. Not then. Not when I shook my head and would not speak of my childhood and family. _They were dead. It was done. It did not matter._

Yet, I knew she wondered why, wondered the reason I would willingly speak of pain and humiliation, but not this. Wondered and put the information away for later. As well as giving it to Ibiki and the _Hokage_ …

The _Hokage_ for certain. He always knew too much of my mood and mind each time I saw him on my monthly visits to his offices in the Tower. There was no doubt on my part what his sources were and, though I had been fearful and uncertain, filled with frightful trepidation to the point of dizziness and nausea my first visit, I began to find the appointments boring and predicable. Typical. Uninteresting. The man was kind, in his way. Offering me paternal, elderly caring and consideration, while he sat and smoked his clove tobacco. The head of _Konoha_ knew all that went on with me and had no need of me to report to him. But still he called for me and still I went, answering his inquiries and absently studying him.

Really, his only question of any particular concern to me each month was as to my contentment. _Was I happy living with Rai? Was she good to me? Was there anything I lacked? Did I wish for any other arrangement?_

_Yes, yes, of course I was content with Rai. She was very good to me. I lacked nothing he could give me. No… No, I did not wish for anything else._

No.

No, I did not delude myself into thinking either the _Hokage_ of the Leaf, or the woman he had set to pull apart the last of my secrets, cared intimately for me or my personal wellbeing. But… the woman I talked to did at least take responsibility for me in some regard. When I absently, strayingly, without even noting I did it, mentioned I felt the need for something, she seemed pleased. Pleased with this sign of progress, and asked me what more would make me feel well.

What would make me feel well…

_Useful. I wanted to be useful._

That was how I found myself working with Rai at the _Konoha Byōin_ , putting my skills as a medical- _nin_ to use, once more. Healing, as I was meant to, even if the Hospital felt familiar and foreign around me at once. A place resembling that in _Ishi_ , where I’d been employed, yet not like that at all. It left me feeling lost and wondering and small, despite how much I wanted to be there, despite how much I wanted to tend to something beyond myself. Wanted to use my hands for something, which would not leave me feeling drowned in blood.

Rai anticipated my exhaustion and emotions, though, and did everything she could to make things easy for me. We worked, true, but only half days, so we could keep meeting my children in the afternoons, and only in the civilian clinic, where the non-combatants of _Konoha_ came for coughs or aching joints or brought their children when they scrapped their knees. Easy work. Uninteresting work. Work free of blood and urgency and stress. Work, which only minutely sated my desire to be useful.

I wished for more. Wished for work, which would engage me, raise in me a sensation of belonging, but only found I felt out of place, out of tune, out of sync. Something in me was empty, unfulfilled in the most basic, instinctual and intimate of ways. As if something in my soul had been hollowed out or another of my limbs had been removed. I wanted to help. But Rai felt me incapable of baring the stress of it, and the people of the Leaf… those of _Konoha_ … it was plain they seemed uneasy around me, and I lacked all way to reassure them they had nothing to fear of me. There was no denying I was a foreign _nin_ and strange. Aloof and apparently unfeeling. So very expressionless and monotone, with non-color eyes that looked far away. Seemed to look through them and passed them.

No one wished for a medical- _nin_ who frightened them. They sought for ease, calm, when they came for healing. And I had none to offer them.

So, I drifted through the days, still seeking after that fleeting, retreating desire to be useful, and all the while shrinking back into myself. Turning inward, making Rai worry. I could see in in her when she looked at me at night. The concern, the wonder if she had done something wrong. She hadn’t really, and I wished I could tell her so. But feared to ask for more, even as I regretted making my watcher fret over me. I had my children, I would be well, in the end.

Or, I told myself so.

But my children were also changing. Their natural tendency toward learning fast and frontline experience accelerated them through the Academy. There was really very little the instructors could teach them that I hadn’t already shown them in some fashion. Seeing this, accepting it, the powers that ruled _Konoha_ passed my children through early graduations when fall turned to winter and my young ones moved into other areas of learning. Most came to the Tree Leaf Hospital for direct training in medical _ninjutsu_ , others opted to join _genin_ teams and become ordinary _shinobi_ , and Haru, my Haru, my child so like me, told me as the first snow dusted our hair she had been recruited by the ANBU.

“I’m going to be an s-rank _shinobi_ , mother,” she said, quiet eyes raised to mine.

“Is that what you want?” I asked, feeling the ache in my heart.

“Yes,” she assured, looking out over the haze the _Naka_ River had become. “I only do what I want now, mother.”

Only what she wanted… Yes. Yes, I know that. Somewhere in my heart, I knew that was true for all my children. And Haru… she was strong. Stronger than me, in some ways. She would make an excellent ANBU, already looked the part beside her masked and silver-haired partner. She would be alright.

Really, all of them would be. I knew it. Knew it even before their graduation, when the _Hokage_ told me he was extending the offer to me and my children to become _Konoha-nin_. To no longer remain refugees of war holding asylum in the Village Hidden by Leaves, but to become a part of it. I knew, watching my children accept the offer, they would be alright. They had found homes and their places in the life of the _ninja_ world.

But I…

When my therapist asked me why I did not become part of _Konoha_ with my children, I could only cry and tell her what Kazue had taught me, that a medical- _nin_ should not be bound to any village or held under their politics.

She was quiet, letting me cry, then she asked the question I anticipated, the one I feared. If I was loyal to _Konoha_. If I would betray them. I could only answer I was loyal to my children and they were loyal to _Konoha_. I would never do anything to hurt them.

“Does that make me a bad person?” I sobbed it, my voice a rising hysteric, my tears hot and thick between my fingers, the first time I had truly broken down into uncontrolled weeping since those weeks when we had met. But I was afraid, terrified that what I said, what I admitted, would send me back to Ibiki. That my refusal to join myself to _Konoha_ would prove me finally dangerous and end all the softness I’d been afforded thus far. Because it wasn’t my only refusal. I still denied these _nin_ of _Konoha_ access to my past and the time before my first death and I feared. Feared so that I curled into a ball of misery on the couch and it was some time before the woman answered me. Surprised by my out rush of overwrought feeling.

“No, Ko. It doesn’t make you a bad person. I think… it makes you human.”

The words were not a reassurance. But they were not an accusation, either. So, all I could do was take them and move on into the clasp of winter. Cold drew down over _Konoha_ , like the closing of a hand, and snow lay heavy in the streets and on the buildings. All seemed to be muted under it. Voices, laughter, activity, emotion. All seemed to slow and go dormant, like the leafless trees.

My children and I played in the snow, on occasion, ghosted over its crystalline surface, while we spared, but it was different. We were never all together at once. Many were out on missions or training. We gathered when and where we could but this was growing more seldom and sporadic.

And I… I tried to understand that was well and to learn my way in a world I was unsure of, but I felt I was coming slowly apart at the ends. As if my edges were frayed. I began to feel reserved and remote, frozen and chilled with the ice of winter. For so long, I had been trained and instructed for singular purposes. For one thing with my family, for another with Kazue, for something cruel and forced in _Ishi_. And in each place, I had not wholly been allowed time and initiative to decide my own way. To know my own mind and determine my own life choices. Kazue would have given these things to me, if we had been together longer, but we hadn’t, and I had never learned what I in myself would do, independent of others. Without the need to watch over the welfare of others above my own.

What was it I would do, when all of my children went off on their own? What did I want… just for myself? What, of all the paths laid before me by my myriad instructors, would I choose as _mine_?

I had no definitive answers, but at least some things in my day-to-day existence conspired to improve my mindset.

This shift began in the Hospital. We were working in the clinic check-in some day in bitter January. Rai and I and a collection of other white-clad _nin_ with quiet smiles and hushed voices. Our patients were sparse and mostly consistent of a scattering of elderly civilians come for physical examinations or minor aches.

I was moving lazily, lethargically, among a group of them, taking their information down in small, neat characters on a chart. The old, at least, had very little fear of me. Maybe they had become used to looking death in the face, and so I did not trouble them. It did not matter. I was feeling rather absent, disconnected from it all, and the faces before me, from these people who did not really need me, when a different thing happened. A strange thing.

The clinic was not meant for emergency cases. Was not intended to be a place the severely injured were brought. Was not, but all the same, the door was thrown open and a panting, crying teen stumbled in, carrying a shrieking form curled around his chest.

Everything stopped at this sudden intrusion, went still and stiff. Yet, while the rest of my kind stood locked and blinking, I moved with no thought and gentle hands. The teen carried a child in his arms. A weeping child. An injured child. And my only thought was to undo the damage that’d been done.

 _Shunshin_ had ever been easy for me. Natural. Like breathing. One heartbeat I was across the room, the next I was before the shocked teen, already slipping into the skin I’d worn on the battlefields of _Ishi_ and _Ame_. Professional and thorough and frightenly efficient.

The younger of the two children, the one cradled in what surely must be his brother’s arms if family resemblance was anything to go by, suffered from a broken leg. Though the older tried to hold him carefully, the limb still dangled awkwardly. I noted this with a single glance and as I had learned to do over countless scenes of slaughter and death, where all I could do was stem the pain of the dying, I slammed a _chakra_ shunt into a particular line of nerves, turning off the younger boy’s ability to feel pain.

I had to be a shock, my appearance and action almost too quick to follow, and the loss of discomfort another shock. There and gone in a flash of green. Whatever shocked him most, though, the younger child stopped crying as soon as I pulled my fingers back.

He blinked wet, confused eyes at me and I felt myself shift again. From the proficient, frontlines surgeon, I changed to something else, something slightly older and tenderer. “Hey there,” I said softly, kneeling down to be at a better level with those hurt and frightened eyes. “I’m Ko. I’m here to take care of you. Will you let me do that?” I said the last, letting it hang just a little bit, inviting the tiny thing to tell me his name, even as I reached out a hand to him. Slowly, gently.

With a whimper, that wasn’t quite cry and was in no way an attempt to tell me his name, he reached back for me and moved to crawl into my arms. His older brother, having brought him here for the help of medical- _nin_ , let him come to me, and I received the little body easily. “I have you. It’s going to be alright,” I assured, holding him and smoothing comforting circles into his back.

Rai was at my side, then, broken out of her own surprise and now centered on me. “Can you do it, Ko?”

I glanced at her sidelong, then let my attention return to the one in my arms. “Yes,” I said, standing and taking the weight of him with ease. Despite my small stature, my body was strong, muscled, and I’d been recovering my physical energy over the months I’s spent walking free in _Konoha_. Nor was the injury difficult to deal with. A clean break. A thing handled in an exam room in the space of minutes, while Rai attended me and I sang to keep both brothers calm.

Finished, the little one bounded up, seemingly thrilled and excited to have been treated by a real medical- _nin_. He hugged me around the neck, thanked me, and tugged on his brother’s hand, eager to get back to climbing trees. A thing the older, still somewhat dazed, sibling didn’t appear inclined to do. Perhaps some other day, he offered to his brother, as I saw them out, hand in hand.

It was only when they were gone, only when I was standing, absorbing, absently warmed from within, feeling content and, for once, not so empty, it was only then that my guardian smiled at me and said quietly, “You really are so good with children, aren’t you, Ko?”

It surprised me she should be so taken with what I considered a completely easy thing. But then, it was hard for me to tell her children had always been something near to the center of me. Hard to tell her children had been my special care, wandering the _ninja_ world with Kazue. My mentor had noted early my affinity for the young, noted it when I was still little more than a child myself and broken from my first death, and ever after, he had made them mine to heal in whatever village we entered. It was hard to say that. To admit my base need to protect those younger and more defenseless than I was. I had my reasons. I did not need to speak them.

But maybe Rai didn’t need me to. Quietly, without saying more than a few words about it, she switched us to shifts in the children’s ward at the Hospital and this was better. This was so much better. So many young lives. So many… And perhaps the young didn’t know enough of death to fear me. Like the old, they seemed to have no unease around me. Only accepting me, and, strangely, seeming to recognize me, exclaiming to their parents or guardians I was Ko, Hisao’s mother or Kaori’s mother or Hideyuki’s mother. Whatever the adults thought of _me_ and the title _mother_ , they accepted both with what grace they could for their children, who in some way knew mine.

The little ones. All the little ones around me. They brought stinging tears to my eyes, but not because of pain. Keeping up with them, having their fingers curl into mine, as they smiled up at me and let me lead them to the exam rooms, babbling all the while with complete trust in me. It broke my heart into two but left me weeping with a kind of lightness. This was what I wanted. _Needed._ This. This ability to preserve some light in the world. Children were young, most often they were full of cheer and radiance and their own personal wonder. Helping them, healing them, made me feel whole. More complete than I had been since Kazue.

Rai noticed it and her obvious pleasure was shown in little smiles and unspoken words I understood all the same. Her, “Hey, Ko, how you doing?” was more than enough between us.

More than enough after all the hours and days we had spent so close to one another. Rai. I lived with her. I watched her, as the months rolled on, as winter lost its stranglehold on us and spring tentatively gathered warmth and light around it like a blanket. Watched her and learned her through little moments and subtle instances. Her smell, her smile, her sway in movement, her careless glances, her constant sluggish, barely functioning fumbles every morning before she had her coffee. I grew to know her through all this, just as I garnered information of her past through a collection of slowly unraveled talks spaced over weeks and weeks. Conversations that were arranged to never be too much at once. Never a steady, chattering flow that would have overwhelmed me, instead random, but carefully selected, moments and little bursts.

This was how she told me about choosing her name. Rai Suru. Trust and change. Her only explanation for the choice, “I wanted it to have meaning.” It was how she expressed her decision to answer the need for medical- _nin_ in the Intelligence Division because someone had to do it, and if that someone was her than someone else wouldn’t have to.

All of it made me made me begin to look at the woman who cared for me with the same familiarity and affection and possessiveness I aimed at my children. She was becoming family to me in the same way they were my family. And I silently considered this unexpected event with the kind of seriousness and distance with which I pondered the thought of what I was to become in this world where I need find my own way, choose my own path, decided what it was I was to be.

Rai was family. And I… I had to find a way to live. Against my will, to my own slow surprise, I was waking up from death, and I had to deal with that.

Once, in the space of a quiet night where Rai and I sat apart on her couch, a movie playing into the air, Rai reading and I thinking, I asked softly, without looking at her, “If you could do anything what would you do?”

She glanced at me, then back at the book in her hands. “I’m already doing it, Ko. I always wanted to be a medical- _nin_. Helping people. Even if I ended being _Yōkai_ , I’m still satisfied. What about you, Ko? What would you do?”

Perhaps I knew if I asked the question she would turn it back on me. Perhaps I wanted her to because the answer was on my lips and being uttered before I could think to stop it. “I would start an orphanage.” I looked away, turned my eyes off to the distance, my hand clenching, stretching my skin taunt and white over my knuckles because I knew it wasn’t the only thing I would do. “And I would teach children to take care of themselves.” Because all too often, I’d lived in a world where adults not only neglected their young, but used and abused them. Primed them to be what was desired, with no thought for the life destroyed in the process. If I could, I would give the young the strength to stand for themselves and say no.

“Oh, Ko,” Rai soothed, intruding on my thoughts and letting the book fall into her lap, “you can have that. You _can_ do whatever you want. We’ll help you.”

I didn’t reply to this, didn’t acknowledge it. Because, though I was regaining a will to live, a desire for something more, I did not see the truth in this statement. It wasn’t that I distrusted Rai, or that she meant it, more, it was that no matter how well things were in _Konoha_ , I could not escape the creeping feeling this state could not last.

In every life I had lived, something had come and ended me. Had upturned what I thought my life could be, dragged me from it, broken and bleeding, and killed another portion of me. Even Ibiki. I had had to die to be reborn in _Konoha_ , now, all I could do was wait with sickening expectation for the next stroke. Wait for the lightening to fall. Wait for the doom to strike, the way a man returned from war constantly waited to hear the rumble and growl of _Doton jutsu_ in the earth beneath his feet, no matter the time he knew he was safe.

No matter the reassurance all was well. No matter the calm continuance of placidity.

No matter.

I went through my days with rare, half smiles and absent glances. Better. Slowly adjusting to the flow of life in _Konoha_ , life with Rai, but never fully at ease. Never free of those things I would not speak. Always waiting for the crack. For that inexplicable _something_ I sensed was just out of reach.

It came one day when spring had turned the air fare and bright, though cold as only spring after winter and before true summer can be. That moist, sweet coldness, with a hint of earthen musk, as the ground woke from its frozen slumber. A clear, sharp day when all felt hushed and still and on the verge of waking when the early morning chill left the rustling breeze.

For once, Rai was up before me. Up and moving around with the coffee pot untouched. When she saw me standing in the kitchen door, quiet and unsmiling, her face broke into fondness and she asked me to go for a walk. I agreed, and soon we were prowling the deserted paths of a _Konoha_ not yet awake.

Rai chattered, attempted to draw me out of my reverie, attempted to prompt me into conversation and engagement I would not afford her. And, with a smile of affection, a tiny lift of her lips, she took my hand in hers as we walked.

I had been looking up at her, thoughtful, considering. At the feel of her hand curling around mine, I let my face fall into expressionless lines, my heart slowing behind my ribs, even as it seemed to swell with pain and final, bitter understanding. “What have you done with her?” I asked, voice soft, toneless in my aching shock, yet, my feet never faltered in their slow, nerveless steps.

The face that was Rai’s went hard, features twisting into something harsh and horrible, almost squirming into another face entirely, like an image superimposed on another. “Took you long enough to figure it out, _otouto_.” It was said with Rai’s voice, but another’s inflection and cadence, one I hadn’t heard in so long it tore my soul apart, and I could do nothing but glance back at him with pained eyes.

“No,” the word was thick and strained. “It didn’t. I knew the moment I saw you, Ryo. Your _jutsu_ was always flawless, but you never cared to study your targets. Rai doesn’t love mornings and she would never take my hand without asking.”

His instant frustration twisted Rai’s lip up into snarling anger and the hand he still held around mine tightened, squeezing tighter with the intention it should hurt. “You always were condescending, _otouto_. If you want your medic bitch back, you’ll have to come and collect her, _Ko_.” He stretched the name with emphasis, as if it displeased him, and tried to pull away from me, but I clasped his hand in a frim hold and looked up at him, letting the pain and pleading in my eyes appeal to him in ways I knew my words would not.

“You don’t have to do this, Ryo.”

“Have to?” It was a hiss that wanted to be a growl. “Who are you to talk about _have to_? You’ll find me, or I’ll kill her. That is, if you still know anything besides _healing_ , _otouto_.”

With the last words he broke contact with me and flashed away from my grasping hand before I could get another hold on him. I would have pushed my _chakra_ into _shunshin_ and pursued, but Ryo had never been one to work alone and this time was no different. I had sensed the others directly after Ryo had dropped his act and tracked their _chakras_ , as they closed in following Ryo’s departure.

The first of the three ANBU made the mistake of ignoring one of the basic tenements of _taijutsu_ : size does not matter. He imagined his greater bulk and height would give him an advantage and foolishly entered my space. Angry _chakra_ flaring alone my skin and the tips of my fingers, I let him come, then just soft-blocked the arm he was using to swing a _kunai_ at my neck, slid forward into his space too quickly for him to counter, and delivered a carefully calculated burst of _chakra_ to his system. Just enough to drop him like a nerveless rock.

As the first went down, I plucked the _kunai_ from his hand, and spun myself into to a double roundhouse that stunned the second ANBU, who thought following close on the heels of the first would give her an advantage on a confused medical- _nin_ , who surely couldn’t know much of combat. Likely, when she came to she would have a concussion and rethink her estimation.

It was the third that gave me trouble. The man knew enough to hold back and observe. And he had a sword. But, like size, weapons gave little advantage against someone who knew how to counter. I deflected several blows with the _kunai_ , sparks flying when the flats of both blades met, then took the necessary risk, moved in close, under his reach, and delivered a _chakra_ infused punch to his chest that sent him flying back with the wind knocked out of him and enough broken ribs to ensure he would not get up, until someone of my white-clad kin patched his bones back together.

The whole of it took less than a minute, but it was far more time than Ryo needed to disappear. The attack no more than a distraction designed for that purpose

Yet, I knew, straightening up, breathing slightly elevated, knuckles stinging, that it was going to be a difficulty for me. I barely had the time to run through a series of quick hand signs before the pair of _Konoha_ ANBU the _Hokage_ had set to tail Rai and I, since my release from the Intelligence Division, dropped into crotches to either side of me. Faces blank and covered by porcelain. Really, my threatening Ibiki had been a foolish thing on my part. He had guessed there was something about me not quite in line with my image as a medical- _nin_ before I’d so imbecilicly said those words of threat, but they had sealed the understanding of me as something else, and the _Hokage_ knew enough to trust his Head of Torture and Interrogation. Ibiki had known I bore watching.

Just as I knew there was something I had to do. “I need to speak to Morino- _san_ ,” I said slowly, as the ANBU stood and urged me to walk.

I continued saying it all the way to our destination, while the two herded me and I sensed other _chakras_ passing us out of sight, to clean up the mess I had made and transport the foreign ANBU to the secure wing of the Tree Leaf Hospital. _I need to talk to Morino-_ san _. I need to talk to Morino-_ san _._ Perhaps my repetition convinced them, or perhaps their orders had always been to bring me to the man, if I did something meriting doubt and confinement.

In either case, it wasn’t long before we reached the Intelligence Division and I found myself in the same interrogation room where I had first met Ibiki Morino. Enclosed by the same stone walls, sitting in the same metal chair, situated behind the same metal table. Only this time, my wrists and ankles weren’t restrained, and I just sat quietly; waiting with my hands resting loosely on the table and my gaze absent and distant.

It wasn’t long before the famed torture of _Konoha_ entered, as he had the day we’d met, long, dark coat rippling around his large frame, to pull out a chair and sit across from me. His assisting ANBU were there too, mutely moving about the room, setting up recording devices, silent evidence this _was_ an interrogation and not merely a conversation, and yet… neither Ibiki nor I seemed hurried to talk.

“Ko,” he said at last, when the empty, wordless space between us had lingered several minutes. He said it soft, as if to see how I would react to it, as if he still did not wish to startle me after all this time.

“Morino- _san_ ,” I responded, voice strained but steady. I passed a hand over my eyes, then. Tears were beading there, but not falling, and I wanted to brush them away.

He let me. He let me have still more time to gather myself, while we watched each other. While he took me in, this version of me like and unlike the delicate, trembling, and disoriented medical- _nin_ he thought he knew from our last encounter. I saw the twitch move under his scar, as he appraised my stillness and the here-to-unnoticed reddening of my split knuckles from where I had delivered the bone-breaking punch to the second of Ryo’s ANBU.

“Talk to me, Ko,” he urged, at last. Gently still, despite his next words. “I have three beat to shit _Ame_ ANBU soon-to-be on my hands, and from what our _shinobi_ say, Suru is nowhere to be found.”

“He took her.”

That twitch fluttered under his skin, again. “Who took her, Ko?”

“Morino- _san_.” I paused, my left hand unconsciously moving to my right, the thumb massaging up and down the scar in my palm. “Do you remember what I told you of my family, Morino- _san_?”

He gave no outward sign my change in topic, so blatant and in disregard of his direct questions, troubled him. Whatever he thought of me and how little fear I showed him and this place that had so frightened and upset me a little less than a year previous, I had two things in my favor. I had always answered him, either directly or with silence, and I had never lied to him. Ibiki would have known if I had. He had likely encountered so many lies in his time in the Intelligence Division detecting them was as natural as reflex. But I had always told the truth, even in my avoidances, and I watched the turn of Ibiki Morino’s reasoning behind his dark eyes. Saw the moment he decided this was my way of answering.

“You said they were nomads, and that they were killed. That people die in war.”

“Yes,” I affirmed, thumb slipping up and on the ridge of scar. “People do die in war. I watched my first man die when I was three.” I did not want to see the effect of this on his expression, did not care to know if it would be pity or surprise or blank acceptance. There were other things I needed to say and they were pushing up my throat, threatening to choke me. “I told you my family were nomads, Morino- _san_ , and that was true. But there was something I never told you.”

“What was that, Ko?” The words were soft and maybe that helped the admission out along with my tears.

“We were assassins.” I pressed my hands to my face and wept a little. Not hysterical or weighted tears, more tired and empty. These tears were old and worn with long use.

“Assassins.” There was far less trace of surprise there than I would have thought possible, but then, Ibiki _had_ guessed there was something more in me I was hiding and my careless display of my combat abilities since my release had to have given him some clue.

“Yes.” I swiped at my eyes, drying them, or, at least pushing the salt water from them and onto my cheeks. “We most often hired our services to the _Amekage_ and the Rain, but my family was not loyal. We took targets for other nations, if they paid us well enough. For a time, _Ame_ ignored this, but when Hanzō of the Salamander took leadership of the Rain, he determined we were too dangerous to him and found a man in our household willing to betray the family.

“He killed us in our sleep.” My voice broke and this time I did weep hiccupping, rending sobs, putting my head down into my hands and letting this original pain run out of me in front of Ibiki. And oddly, that was alright. The man had seen so much of me… Taken so many of my frayed and unraveling pieces out of me it almost felt right to let this go at last. The final thing I had held on to so stubbornly.

As he always had, Ibiki let me cry. Let me unburden myself, until I was capable of lifting my head and going on, hands laying open and palms up on the table, my eyes fixed on that scar in my right palm. “He was quiet and careful, but I… I don’t know. I heard something and got out of bed. I found him in a hall with blood dripping from his sword. He could have killed me, should have, but he didn’t, he went for a _kunai_ instead and… I was always fast. I got away.”

“Did you ever think this person was still looking for you, Ko?” Gentle. Always so gentle this man. Even when he was taking someone apart.

“No.” It was a hiccup. A last, little, choked exclamation from a constricted throat. “I thought he was dead. I thought Hanzō had removed the last trace of my family. Only Hanzō didn’t, and now… now.” I covered my face with my hands again. “He’ll kill Rai if I don’t find him.”

“I’m sorry, Ko,” he said soft, “I can’t let you do that. Our ANBU will go after Suru. I need you to stay here with me.”

A shattered laugh came out of me. “I understand what you want, Morino- _san_. But I… I need you to understand.”

“Understand what, Ko? I need you to talk to me, so we can find Suru.”

“Yes. Yes you do.” I dropped my hands and took in a shuddering breath. My gaze was wet and wavering when I turned it on him. “The man who killed my family… he’s my older brother. All this time, I thought he was dead. I thought Hanzō had taken my whole family away from me and left me for dead, but now… now I know it’s not true. I have to go after Ryo, as much for him as for Rai.”

Something flickered in Ibiki’s eyes. Something that might have been pity or confusion or real sorrow for what I’d just said. It was hard to tell, but whatever it was he didn’t let it color his voice when he spoke again. His tone kind and neutral. “I’m sorry, Ko. I can’t let you go.”

“I know, Morino- _san_.” My voice trembled over the words, but they still came out clear. “Your mistake is in thinking I was asking permission.”

The last thing I saw, before I put a _chakra_ scalpel through my own eye, was the surprise on Ibiki’s face that I was not only skilled enough to create a shadow clone able fool him, but one capable of penetrating and defeating even the wards around the Intelligence Division.


	7. Woodland Jazz

**Gren:** “You're the one aren't you? You're Spike? Julia was always talking about you. Your eyes are different colors, I see what she was talking about now.”

 **Spike** **Spiegel** **:** “How did you know her? Where was she?”

 **Gren:** “Right on the corner bar stool. She would slip in when I wasn't looking and ask me to play the same song over again every time she came in. Strange lilting tune, and then she would smile. Ohh what a smile, so sad...... so beautiful.”

**Cowboy Bebop, Jupiter Jazz Part Two**

The woodland was flashing past me in sharp bursts, outlined by the quick-vanishing trucks of trees, when the clone dissipated itself and its memories came swarming over me. Settling on me like a skin and showing me the final surprise of Ibiki’s face. The suddenness and hardening reality of it coalescing before my eyes made me stagger. I almost missed my landing on the branch I had been aiming for and when I got there, I paused a moment to breathe and absorb the bleeding memories before vaulting to the next branch.

Complete, taken off-guard surprise was not an expression that looked well on the scarred man’s face, and my jump was clumsy as bitter and unfounded regret rose in me. As if I had done something wrong in deceiving Morino. Wrong… No, perhaps not wrong so much as unfair. He had been kind to me, or as kind to me as he could, and I’d paid him back with deception. Even in the fact Ibiki must have told the _Hokage_ to be wary of me, I expected he likely had been sensitive. I could imagine the man telling the Third a watch should be put on me, and when that venerable old man asked if his torturer actually expected I would do anything meriting such measures, I was sure Ibiki had paused and said no, but do it all the same. Perhaps even do it for no reason so much as to watch out for me. And for this trust I had run away.

My next leap was better timed and swifter. I was not going back. Weighted by guilt or not, it felt good to run. Felt right to aim myself at a target, at a purpose, and hurl myself after it. Especially this purpose.

_Ryo…_

The name was an ache in my heart. Ibiki would have to understand, in the end. I _had to_ go after my brother. Had no conscious choice. He was _my_ brother.

_Ryo._

The address wasn’t his name any more than Ko was mine, but we had all chosen simpler names to be used outside the family. Mine had seemed to fit me better when I thought I had no family. And Ryo…

Another leap and another stagger that forced me to catch myself on a truck and brush tears out of my eyes, clearing my vision. The feeling of a large hand curling around mine formed from the distant past, accompanied by a long-put-out-of-mind smile turned down on me. I’d trailed after my brother since the moment I’d learned to tottle about on my feet. Tailed him, dogging his every step, calling him not Ryo but _nii-san_.

We’d competed with each other our every moment. Not in the typical way of siblings trying to prove themselves, but in true and brutal competition, and yet, we hadn’t hated each other. _Nii-san_ , I called him _nii-san_ , and he had called me _imouto_ , little sister, until I’d told him I was not his sister. I wasn’t exactly his _otouto_ , little brother, either, but I could stand that better than _imouto_. Ryo hadn’t entirely understood it, but he’d accepted it, accepted me.

Pushing myself off into another _chakra_ fueled leap, I knew I would never be able to reconcile or align the image of my brother, my _nii-san_ , the man who had held my hand and told our father I had as much right to learn our art as he had with the image of him in a darkened hall, sword dripping blood, telling me it wouldn’t hurt if I stood still. How my brother had come to the point he found what he did necessary… I would never understand. Even if he explained, I wouldn’t understand.

All I could hold onto was somehow we were alive. Alive, but both broken, both having died in some way. Something had made Ryo feel he had to do what he did and what it was didn’t matter to me. It would have once. When I first met Kazue it had mattered. Maybe even when I first found myself with Ibiki it would have mattered. I’d been so angry then. Angry and terrified, and I’d told _Konoha’s_ famed tortured I didn’t care who lived or died, that all _shinobi_ and their villages could burn. But I didn’t feel that way anymore.

Somehow, my time in _Konoha_ , possibly, even the time in prison, singing to those around me, had cooled that anger. Able to be near my children and see them finding their own way had mellowed something hot and torrid in me, and I didn’t want… didn’t want it back.

Kazue had said I was a fire elemental when he’d learned what my _chakra_ affinity was. Told me I would burn bright and sear anyone who came near me if I didn’t learn. Learn what had been my half absent return. Learn fire died when there was nothing left to burn his final answer.

Another way of saying revenge was pointless. I could strike back or I could heal. Heal myself as much as others. It had taken dying three more times to fully take that in, but I had at last. Maybe the shock of seeing Ryo had forced it in like a knife.

No matter.

The last look on Ibiki Morino’s face said I would have ANBU on my intentionally obvious trial soon, if not already, and that was well. The fact I was using the scarred man made another swell of guilt bubble and burst in my heart but I let it and I took it in with gratitude. It was oddly nice to know my interrogator was likely leaking angry _chakra_ , as he had when I tried to kill myself in his presence, pissed off I’d slipped his guard and taken to the woods. Nice because he would be as annoyed I had disregarded him as he was I was throwing myself in danger. Ibiki Morino was still attempting to look out for my welfare.

And I wasn’t making it easy.

But Ryo was.

He’d left me as clear a trial to follow as I left for the _Konoha-nin_. It was simple to find him because he wanted to be found. Even if he didn’t entirely want it to be easy to get to him. My brother had brought more than the three ANBU I’d trashed in the Leaf village. Six more stood between me and the way to the cave entrance where Ryo was.

I hid my _chakra_ and studied their movements for as long as I dared, before quietly slipping up behind one and immobilizing him with a paralysis _jutsu_. His eyes were terrified looking at me, but I eased him into sleep before beginning anything that would cause him discomfort.

The Chameleon _Jutsu_ my family had designed and implemented was not intended to cause pain when we stole another’s appearance, but it could if you weren’t careful and I hadn’t tried in years. When I stood up, head and shoulders taller than I was used to being, I was rather surprised by how effortless the thing felt. Almost as much as stripping the man, dressing in his clothes, and tying him up. I’d grown, I’d changed, I’d become more medical- _nin_ than the child who’d once taken their first target at half a decade of life, but I still retained the skill of it. Still knew the dance of it and how it felt to wear the skin of another over my own. Still understood how to settle into a body not my own.

Perhaps, I pondered, moving forward, perhaps that should have frightened me or filled me full of regret, but it didn’t. The child I had been and the person I was seemed to have met and melded for this moment, this task, and maybe that was right. For this responsibility, that might be correct.

Right or not, correct or otherwise, defendable or foolhardy, approaching the second ANBU in my stolen appearance, with an easy gait, I felt nothing but serenity. Calm surety guided my hands and words, as I smashed a quick _chakra_ spike into his neck and put him to sleep. His eyes flared wide and startled and scared for a moment, then rolled up and I was easing him to the ground, checking his heartbeat and breathing.

Easy. So easy. The next ANBU was no more suspicious of her companion coming toward her than the first, and not even when the fourth and fifth registered suspicion and unease did my clam break. They all succumbed to sleep or unconsciousness under my hands, even the sixth, who put up a fight and bloodied my lip before going down with a cry and a whimper. This was the time my life had made me for. My moment, and I embraced it, memories of Kazue swimming up behind my eyes.

He had to have known he was going to die when the _Ishi shinobi_ came, but he’d been no different than any other time. I’d often wondered why he hadn’t let me fight, let me try to save him, I could have, could have stained my hands in blood and kept him alive. But, wiping the crimson fluid from my split and dripping lip and pacing into the dusty, smooth-stone place my brother waited for me, I thought I understood. Kazue had done everything he wanted, he was okay with death. He just didn’t want me to do something I would hate myself for.

And I… I…

Looking up and meeting my brother’s eyes, I thought I had done everything I wanted to do as well. I could go back to _Konoha_ and start an orphanage, save more children from pain, but I didn’t need to. I’d spent lifetimes protecting my made family. This was enough. I just hoped Ibiki would understand why I had to run from him. And Haru… My Haru. I hoped she would understand why the one she’d named mother all those years ago had to leave her.

“Hey, Ko,” Ryo said, and I stopped, not bothering to slip out of my borrowed skin or assume its normal patterns of movement in feigned attempt to lie about what my bother already knew to be true. I had come to him.

“Hello, Ryo,” I said, voice thick. Strained and husky with the tears clogging my throat. This time I was using the Chameleon _Jutsu_ and my brother was not and I could see the man he’d grown into. We looked alike, Ryo and I. The same no-color eyes and hair that ran in our family. The same delicate, rounded features bordering on the pretty. The same small, almost compact form. The main difference in us our height. Ryo was taller than I was by a good head, while I would forever be diminutive. The little one. The almost-child who was stronger than I looked.

Ryo was stronger than he appeared as well, though, and he had Rai at his side. My caretaker knelt to his left, twitching softly but otherwise motionless and unbound. One glance at her was enough to see she was wrapped in _Amai Shizuka_ , our family’s signature _genjutsu_. When our father had taught us how to perform the technique he told us if our target accepted their fate and went to it willingly the _genjutsu_ would show them what would give them the greatest peace walking into death. But if our target fought the _genjutsu_ it would show them what haunted and tormented them the most. Judging by Rai’s sporadic movements and little gasps, she wasn’t accepting quietus. I would have expected nothing less of the woman who had cared for me. She was a medical- _nin_. Medical- _nin_ were relentless and we did not accept death until we were the last of our squad.

I hardly had time to consider this, though. Ryo stepped away from my fellow medic and slid his sword out of the sheath on his back. “It’s just like sparing when we were younger, Ko. Only this time, when we’re done, one of us is dead.”

I shifted on my feet, subconsciously assessing the subtleties of his posture, the flex of his muscles, reading his next move there, as if it were a language I’d learned so long ago it was a part of me. Step matched with counter step, slide to the right met with a slip to the left. Each move a step in a choreographed dance that brought us no closer, but maintained an exacting distance between us. If Ryo meant what he said about this being like our sparing so long ago, then it would mean he had no intention of using _ninjutsu_ and this would be only physical skill.

My throat was constricted and sore and it hurt to swallow, hurt to speak, but I did it. “I don’t want to fight you, Ryo.”

“I’m not giving you a choice, _otouto_!” Only the last word was a shout, only at that moment did his body tense and spring, but the pounce was expected. Ryo had always lacked the patience I exhibited in training and in combat.

With a little weary grunt of effort, I dodged back and pulled the sword I’d taken off the first ANBU. Ryo’s sword caught mine on the flat of the blade, both dull sides grating together, and the force of it pushed me back, made me support the length of the blade with the palm of the hand not on the hilt. Our faces were close together and I let the Chameleon _Jutsu_ dispel, let the skin I’d borrowed melt away in a small, sighing exhale that left me under my brother in too large clothes with my hair hanging loose around my face.

“I thought you were dead, Ryo. I thought Hanzō killed you after he got what he wanted from you.”

“Surprise.” It was a low his but my next words were tear-broken.

“I missed you, Ryo.”

“Fuck you!”

Ryo spun away from me, only to launch himself at me again, raining reckless, heavy blows. “You’re a fool to have felt that!”

The difference in our fighting styles had always been simple. Ryo relied on strength and headlong rushes that ended combat before it could begin. But speed had always been my friend. No one, not even Ryo or our father, had ever outdone me in _shunshin_ tag. It was no different now. He would attack, I would evade. Round and round we flashed like two, darting, aerial insects, too fast for movements to be discernable, talking to each other all the while.

“I blamed Hanzō. I knew no matter why you did it, he used you.”

“Assassins are always used, _otouto_! Better me than someone else!”

The words stung a place in me that ached for the older boy who’d held my hand firm in his and swore he would look out for me. The one I’d called _nii-san_ and crawled into bed with. “Please,” I allowed myself to beg without shame. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Hanzō will kill you when he’s done with you, Ryo. Now or later, at some point he will be through with you and find you too dangerous to keep alive. There’s no point in this.”

“Think I don’t know that! It won’t hurt if you are still!”

We were apart. Our blades had clashed and slipped over each other as we separated again. But, repeating those words of so many lifetimes ago, my brother flung himself at me, sword aimed, expecting me to dodge, expecting his quick little brother to counter and flow into the logical defensive retreat. But he hadn’t considered I didn’t want to. Hadn’t once pondered the idea I might do something else, have another option he didn’t look at because he was just so focused on _living_. Whatever his path to this point had been, whatever deaths he had died, what he had experienced was not the same as me. He didn’t know the ideas of the dead were different than the living. As I had reflected in that cell with Ibiki almost a year ago, after the scarred man had drugged me, we did not fear the same. What would terrify some only left us melancholy and absent.

I let my muscles tense, let them tell the tale of my false impending spring, then let them go lax and my sword drop from loose fingers when it was too late for Ryo to take it back. He ran straight into me with a solid thump and the sickening sound of something tearing. He would have pulled back, but I was a medical- _nin_ , I didn’t need weapons to incapacitate, all I needed was a specific, measured burst of _chakra_ to the right nerves. I wrapped my arms around Ryo in a firm embrace, burying my face in his neck, even as his body went slack and he slumped against me.

“I love you, Ryo.” There was copper in my mouth and my vision doubled and returned to normal, hazed and refocused, fluctuating in and out like a bad image on a television screen. “You… don’t have to go back to Hanzō.”

“Ko…” The name was thick and heavy through the paralysis, like he had to pull it up through congealing syrup. There was something that might have been my name, my name, once, long ago, then, “Ko…” and he was slipping out of my arms. Pure, dead weight, as he slid into full unconsciousness and my ability to hold him up rushed out of me like water.

When he fell his sword came out of me with a wet slice and I swayed on my feet, catching myself with a foot forward. Ryo had aimed well, aimed to hit a vital point. Hot, dark-red blood, a different shade than that which came out of shallower wounds, washed down my side and dampened the ANBU pants I wore.

My head spun, I was dizzy, but I still caught sight of Rai fallen on the floor a ways off, Ryo’s _genjutsu_ broken when he lost consciousness. She would be alright. The _genjutsu_ would do no lasting damage and the _Konoha shinobi_ would be here soon to retrieve her. Not before Ryo woke up, but with me dead there would be no reason for him to care about one medical- _nin_ he’d had no real interest in. And I hoped… hoped he would take the chance to flee. Both _Konoha_ and Hanzō and the Rain. Hoped he would be alright too.

It was amazing how loosing blood made one feel so dried out. I was so thirsty I could hardly swallow but I still had the moisture to cry. Tears ran in double rivers down my face, as I swayed again. Rai would be alright. Ryo… would go as he pleased. And my children… They would be alright too. They had a home now, a purpose, and it was strangely comforting to know Rai and the famed torturer of _Konoha_ would look out for them. Ibiki would watch them for one reason or another, I had no doubt.

And I… _So… thirsty…_ I just wanted to be with my family.

Falling was a strange thing. It happened in increments. Frist my knees gave out and I literally dropped unto them like a string had been cut. Then I listed to the side, ever so slowly, and tipped to the ground. Ryo was close to me, and my world dimming, my hand crept out and tangled in his clothes, holding onto him.

It was a pity, really. Dying again.

But if I’d let Rai die for me it would have been the same, none the less. Another death. One I couldn’t take. One I wouldn’t suffer.

This was better.

This was far better…

† † †

Waking was a slow and painful process. But then, waking the dead always is. You have to patch up their wounds and shore up their bleeding. You have to find their heart and make it beat, however unwilling it might be to do that so simple of a thing. I was a medical- _nin_ , I understood what it was to fight against death. Maybe I even understood they were trying to keep me alive long before my first flicker of awareness. A thing that came and went with beating throbs and the whisper of familiar voices.

_Rai. Haru._

_Ibiki._

I was surer I was not dead, as I rose up out of the deep well I’d tumbled down into. My body had felt weighted and stuffed full, immobile, and my mind a dead-blank, but as I floated up I felt lighter and my mind cleared into something more like sleep. And we know we are alive in sleep. We might imagine otherwise, but we do know.

And when I slowly crawled to conciseness, body almost weightless and unreal in a hospital bed, I was not surprised. Only mildly tired in a vulgar way. Here I was, alive yet again, and with the responsibility of facing up to my actions sitting across from me.

“Morino- _san_.” I rasped the name because my mouth was dry and I was eternally sleepy.

“Hey, Ko,” my guardian said softly. Without my having to ask, he reached for a cup on the table beside him and brought it to my lips. I was in a half recline, half sitting, half laying, so it was no trouble to drink, but Ibiki took the cup away too soon. “You should go slow, Ko.”

“Yes, Morino- _san_.” I mumbled it, eyes slipping closed, only to pull heavily back up. “Where is Rai, Morino- _san_?”

“Turn your head.”

I did as asked with some difficulty, mostly born of tiredness, and there was Rai, my ever-present caregiver. She was asleep at the far edge of my bed. Body in a chair, head on a corner of my mattress, twitching restlessly in sleep.

Safe then. And better recovered than me.

“Ryo?” This was cracked and laced with both hunger and worry.

Ibiki sighed at the name. “Your brother was gone when we got to you, Ko. Though his ANBU guard was still where you left them.”

I shut my eyes to hide my relief, but I couldn’t hide the tears in my lashes. “Haru?”

“In an ANBU barracks close by with her partner, Hatake. She refused to leave your side for sometimes, but finally let herself be taken somewhere to sleep when we knew you would be okay.” He paused and I could feel the intensity of his dark eyes on me. “Do you know how hard it was to keep Haru in the village after you left, Ko?”

“I’m sorry, Morino- _san_.”

“You have reason to be. She isn’t free to leave _Konoha_ whenever she chooses, the way you are, Ko. She’s a _Konoha-nin_ , for her it’s treason.”

The words forced my eyes open and on the scarred man for two reasons. Because they stung me, knowing I’d almost harmed my child, and because he’d said I was free. Watched or not, _watched over?_ , I was free. Even if he had said he couldn’t let me go. I swallowed, feeling the thickness of tears and not enough water, there, in my throat. Morino watched me do it, watched me take him in, trying to decide, his eyes quiet. Quiet and without threat or blame, but with something simmering below the surface. Something intent.

Thoughts moved slow through my mind, unfurrowing like flowers. I was not in the secure wing of the _Konoha Byōin_ or in the Intelligence Division, and Ibiki was making no move to either incite me to talk or hint we would being doing so soon. They had my brother’s ANBU, who would be able to tell them… whatever they would tell them. And Rai, who likely had already been debriefed. What more could I give them than this?

“Morino- _san_ …” What words I had been reaching for drifted away, beyond grasp of my fingertips.

“You’re not in trouble, Ko.”

Not in trouble. Not in official trouble but perhaps the _Hokage_ would still have a few things to say to me. Ibiki as well.

“I’m sorry, Morino- _san_ ,” I murmured but for what I was apologizing escaped me as much as a final thought on what Ibiki had told me. I was free to leave whenever I pleased and I was not in trouble. Weariness was chasing me back toward sleep and what hold I’d had on consciences reasoning was dissipating into the warm glow of sleep-fog. I was in _Konoha_. My brother was gone somewhere away, and I did not think he would be back. He would have known I was still alive there, laying in a pool of blood, and he could have killed me, but instead chose to leave me alive for the Leaf _nin_ who must have been close enough for him to sense. The last of my family by birth was somewhere in the world and maybe he would be free. And my family of choice was near. Safe. The rest could be sorted out when my wound healed into a new scar on my skin. A new tale written in flesh.

Beside me, Ibiki sighed again. “You don’t make things easy, Ko.”

“No, Morino- _san_.” This was a lower mumble still. A bare admittance I’d done nothing but make this difficult for the man since we’d met, but no more than that. I was drifting still more, half aware, and all that held clear in my mind was the fact I was being guarded, yet again. Nothing would harm me now. And it was strangely good to know Rai and Ibiki were watching over me.

**Author's Note:**

> I close my eyes and I keep seeing things  
> Rainbow waterfalls  
> Sunny liquid dreams  
> Confusion creeps inside me raining doubt  
> Gotta get to you  
> But I don't know how  
> Call me call me  
> Let me know it's alright  
> Call me call me  
> Don't you think it's 'bout time  
> Please won't you call and  
> Ease my mind  
> Reasons for me to find you  
> Peace of mind  
> What can I do  
> To get me to you
> 
> I had your number quite some time ago  
> Back when we were young  
> But I had to grow  
> Ten thousand years I've searched it seems and now  
> Gotta get to you  
> Won't you tell me how  
> Call me call me  
> Let me know you are there  
> Call me call me  
> I wanna know you still care  
> Come on now won't you  
> Ease my mind
> 
> [Call Me, Call Me - Seatbelts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZm-HyUpNME)
> 
> There is a direct sequel to this work titled [Empathy for the Living](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24690385) if you would like to know what becomes of Ko.  
> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Spare The Dying](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748794) by [Tridraconeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus)




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